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One of the world's best preserved graveyards of prehistoric whales has been recently discovered in the same corner of the Atacama Desert in Chile. The fossils were discovered in June last year during a highway widening project. The Atacama Desert Deserts by definition do not receive any rain. The Atacama Desert of Chile and Peru stretches almost parallel along the Pacific Coast for about 600 miles (1,000km). The average elevation (height) is 13,000 feet (4km) making it the highest desert in the world. It is also one of the coldest deserts with temperatures averaging between 0 and 25 degree Celsius.

The Atacama Desert
Deserts by definition do not receive any rain. The Atacama Desert of Chile and Peru stretches almost parallel along the Pacific Coast for about 600 miles (1,000km). The average elevation (height) is 13,000 feet (4km) making it the highest desert in the world. It is also one of the coldest deserts with temperatures averaging between 0 and 25 degree Celsius.

Map of Chile cc:wikipedia
Climatologists refer to the center of the Atacama as an "absolute desert,". There has been no record of rain in certain parts of the desert for over 400 years since humans began keeping records, making it the driest desert on Earth. The peculiar topography of South America - elevation and location - is responsible for this. Explore the notes to learn how topography creates deserts.

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Also from the Internet:

Archaeologists have uncovered 20 Stone-Age skeletons in and around a rock shelter in Libya's Sahara desert, according to a new study.
The skeletons date between 8,000 and 4,200 years ago, meaning the burial place was used for millennia. "It must have been a place of memory," said study co-author Mary Anne Tafuri, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge. "People throughout time have kept it, and they have buried their people, over and over, generation after generation."

About 15 women and children were buried in the rock shelter, while five men and juveniles were buried under giant stone heaps called tumuli outside the shelter during a later period, when the region turned to desert.
The findings, which are detailed in the March issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, suggest the culture changed with the climate.

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Millennia of burials

From about 8,000 to 6,000 years ago, the Sahara desert region, called Wadi (Wadi means valley or riverbed) Takarkori, was filled with scrubby vegetation and seasonal green patches. Stunning rock art depicts ancient herding animals, such as cows, which require much more water to graze than the current environment could support, Tafuri said.

Stone Age Painters Were Realists
Tafuri and her colleague Savino di Lernia began excavating the archaeological site between 2003 and 2006. At the same site, archaeologists also uncovered huts, animal bones and pots with traces of the earliest fermented dairy products in Africa. (See Images of the Stone-Age Skeletons)

To date the skeletons, Tafuri measured the remains for concentrations of isotopes, or molecules of the same element with different weights.

The team concluded that the skeletons were buried over four millennia, with most of the remains in the rock shelter buried between 7,300 and 5,600 years ago.

The males and juveniles under the stone heaps were buried starting 4,500 years ago, when the region became more arid. Rock art confirms the dry up, as the cave paintings began to depict goats, which need much less water to graze than cows, Tafuri said.

The ancient people also grew up not far from the area where they were buried, based on a comparison of isotopes in tooth enamel, which forms early in childhood, with elements in the nearby environment.

Shift in culture?
The findings suggest the burial place was used for millennia by the same group of people. It also revealed a divided society.

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Whales in Chile, South America, yes, but none mentioned in the Sahara. No mention of whale bones in the Sahara, just people and herd animal bones.