This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Tiny skeletal plates recovered beside fossil whale bones in southern Denmark offer a rare glimpse of life around a whale carcass approximately 9.5 million years ago. Researchers have identified a new species of brittle star, Ophiura huebnerjenseni, from the Gram Clay Pit and suggest it represents the first fossil record of brittle stars associated with a whale fall.
The marine deposits in Gram Clay Pit are known for the discovery of several fossil whale skeletons and the largest megalodon vertebrae ever found. They also preserve a rich record of mollusks and other invertebrates, but until now, brittle stars had remained undetected. Two Museum of Southern Jutland staff members, Mette Elstrup and Trine Sørensen, teamed up with Ben Thuy at Musée national d'histoire naturelle in Luxembourg and Lea D.
Numberger-Thuy at Dinosaurierpark Teufelsschlucht in Germany to search for the first brittle star remains from the Gram Formation. The paper is published in the journal Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen. The discovery of the brittle star specimens comes from sediment collected during the 2018 excavation of a beaked whale's lower jaw and associated vertebrae.
The researchers washed and sieved the sediment, picked out microfossils under a microscope and examined selected specimens using scanning electron microscopy. Distinctive features of the brittle stars' skeletal plates revealed a previously undescribed species. The crucial clue was where those plates occurred.
"Only three samples taken directly beside the whale bones contained brittle-star remains. Samples from the same layer farther from the skeleton, and other comparison samples, yielded none," the lead author Thuy explains. "We considered whether currents had simply concentrated the plates around the bones, or whether local chemical conditions had helped preserve them.
However, sea-urchin fragments of comparable size and mineral composition occurred in every sample studied. This makes a preservation-only explanation less likely and supports the interpretation that the brittle stars lived on or close to the whale carcass," Thuy added. When a dead whale reaches the seabed, its carcass provides a concentrated source of food, creating what scientists call a whale fall.
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