Adult and juvenile fossil rorqual skeletons from Cerro Ballena - Proc R Soc B 281 20133316 4 c

Cerro Ballena (lit. "Whale Hill") is a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

Late Miocene The Late Miocene (also known as Upper Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene epoch (geology), Epoch made up of two faunal stage, stages. The Tortonian and Messinian stages comprise the Late Miocene sub-epoch, which lasted from 11.63 Ma (million ye ...

palaeontological site hosting remains of

cetaceans Cetacea (; , ) is an infraorder of aquatic mammals that includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Key characteristics are their fully aquatic lifestyle, streamlined body shape, often large size and exclusively carnivorous diet. They propel them ...

. Pyenson, N. D.; Gutstein, C. S.; Parham, J. F.; Le Roux, J. P.; Carreño Chavarría, C.; Little, H.; Adam Metallo, A.; Rossi, V.; Valenzuela-Toro, A. M.; Velez-Juarbe, J.; Santelli, C. M.; Rubilar Rogers, D.; Cozzuol, M. A. and Suárez, M. A. (2014).
Repeated mass strandings of Miocene marine mammals from Atacama Region of Chile point to sudden death at sea
. ''Proceedings of the Royal Society B'', 281(1781): 20133316 It is located in the

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the ...

along the

Pan-American Highway The Pan-American Highway (french: (Auto)route panaméricaine/transaméricaine; pt, Rodovia/Auto-estrada Pan-americana; es, Autopista/Carretera/Ruta Panamericana) is a network of roads stretching across the Americas and measuring about in to ...

a few kilometers north of the port of

Caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcano eruption. When large volumes of magma are erupted over a short time, structural support for the rock above the magma chamber is ...

. Besides cetaceans Cerro Ballena does also contains fossils of

pinniped Pinnipeds (pronounced ), commonly known as seals, are a widely distributed and diverse clade of carnivorous, fin-footed, semiaquatic, mostly marine mammals. They comprise the extant families Odobenidae (whose only living member is the walru ...

sailfish The sailfish is one or two species of marine fish in the genus ''Istiophorus'', which belong to the family Istiophoridae (marlins). They are predominantly blue to gray in colour and have a characteristically large dorsal fin known as the sa ...

es, aquatic sloths and marine

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

as well as

trace fossil A trace fossil, also known as an ichnofossil (; from el, ἴχνος ''ikhnos'' "trace, track"), is a fossil record of biological activity but not the preserved remains of the plant or animal itself. Trace fossils contrast with body fossils, ...

s. It has about 40 cetacean individuals all of them in relatively good state. The cetaceans appear to have died at different times but due to the same causes:

poisoning A poison can be any substance that is harmful to the body. It can be swallowed, inhaled, injected or absorbed through the skin. Poisoning is the harmful effect that occurs when too much of that substance has been taken. Poisoning is not to ...

toxin A toxin is a naturally occurring organic poison produced by metabolic activities of living cells or organisms. Toxins occur especially as a protein or conjugated protein. The term toxin was first used by organic chemist Ludwig Brieger (1849– ...

s secreted by

algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular mic ...

. The site was discovered in 2011 and is protected by law since 2012. It hosts an investigation centre. As of February 2014 scientists from Brazil, Chile and the United States were studying the site. Geologically Cerro Ballena is part of the Cerro Ballena Member of

Bahía Inglesa Formation Caldera Basin ( es, Cuenca de Caldera) is a sedimentary basin located in the coast of northern Chile west of Copiapó. The basin has a fill of marine sediments of Late Cenozoic age. With a north-south extension of and an east-west width of the ...

References

{{Geology of Chile Cetaceans Paleontology in Chile Miocene paleontological sites Protected areas of Atacama Region Cenozoic paleontological sites of South America

See also

References