Since 2004, scientists worldwide have discovered 32 species of Osedax occurring at depths from 10 to 4000 meters. Various species are capable of colonizing a broad array of bones from fish, marine mammals, birds, turtles, and terrestrial mammals. These worms can consume bones very quickly, removing visual evidence of a sunken whale skeleton in as little as a decade. Osedax studies have led to new insights regarding carbon recycling on the ocean floor. Large food falls, like a whale carcass provides a huge pulse of food in an environment that tends to be food limited. The carcasses attract scavengers like sharks, hagfish, crabs, and smaller crustaceans such as amphipods who quickly consume the flesh. The exposed bones are then available to Osedax worms and bone-eating snails that digest the minerals and with the help of free-living and symbiotic microbes and consume the remaining organic compounds. Scientists have only begun to understand the ways in which carbon is recycled in the world's oceans and its relevance to climate change.