Paleontologists presented this Thursday the fossilized remains of a basilosaur, a “primitive whale” that inhabited the seas 36 million years ago, found at the end of 2021 in a desert in Peru, the researchers announced this Thursday.
“We have introduced the new Peruvian basilosaur, it is the complete skull of an archaic whale that lived 36 million years ago,” paleontologist Mario Urbina, head of the team that discovered the remains, told AFP.
Urbina indicated that the cetacean was found at the end of 2021 in the Ocucaje desert, in the region of Ica, some 350 km south of Lima.
The “Ocucaje Predator”, as its discoverers called it, was about 17 meters long and fed with its powerful teeth on tuna, sharks and a large number of sardines.
“This finding is very important because there are no other similar specimens discovered in the world,” said the researcher at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, the oldest in America.
- “The sea was warm” -
For his part, the paleontologist Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi explained that basilosaurus differs from other species known for the great development of its teeth and its size.
These characteristics suggest that this animal was probably at the top of the food chain.
“This is an extraordinary find because of its great state of conservation. It is a predator of the world's seas, this animal was one of the greatest predators of its time. It's a primitive whale,” Salas-Gismondi told AFP.
“At that time the Peruvian sea was warm, it wasn't cold as it is today. Thanks to this type of fossils we can reconstruct the history of the Peruvian sea,” added the head of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Museum of Natural History.
The first cetaceans evolved from terrestrial animals some 55 million years ago.
By the late Eocene (between 56 million and 34 million years ago), cetaceans had already fully adapted to marine life and prowled almost every ocean in the world. At that time, whales had not yet evolved and almost all cetaceans were macro marine predators, according to scholars.
The Ocucaje Desert is a place rich in fossils, according to researchers.
“Thanks to the Ocucaje fossils we can rediscover the history of the Peruvian sea. We have a record of 42 million years of evolution and marine species,” explained Salas-Gismondi.
Fossils of four-legged dwarf whales, dolphins, sharks and other species from the Miocene period (between 5 and 23 million years ago) were discovered in the same desert more than two decades ago.
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