The fossil of a prehistoric four-legged whale, unearthed a decade ago in the western desert of Egypt, belongs to a hitherto unknown species, Egyptian scientists said on Tuesday. The creature, believed to be the ancestor of modern whales, is believed to have lived 43 million years ago.
The prehistoric whale, considered semi-aquatic because it lived both on land and at sea, had the features of a competent hunter, the team’s most prominent paleontologist, Hesham Sallam, told AP, which distinguishes it from other whale fossils. .
The remains were found in 2008 by a team of Egyptian environmentalists, in an area that was covered with water in prehistoric times. However, researchers did not publish their findings until last month to confirm that it was a new species.
Sallam noted that the team did not begin examining the fossil until 2017 because it wanted to bring together the best team of Egyptian paleontologists for the study.
“This is the first time in the history of Egyptian vertebrate paleontology that we have an Egyptian team leading the documentation of a new genus and species of four-legged whale,” Sallam said.
The fossil sheds some light on the evolution of whales, which went from being herbivorous terrestrial mammals to carnivorous species that today live exclusively in water. The transition was made about 10 million years ago, according to an article published about the discovery in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The region of the Western Desert of Egypt is already known for the so-called Whale Valley, or Wadi Al-Hitan, a tourist attraction and home to fossil remains of other types of prehistoric whales.
The new creature belongs to the protocetaceae family, extinct semi-aquatic whales that lived between 59 and 34 million years ago, Sallam said. The animal walked on land, but also hunted in the water.
“It’s another new species of primitive whales, from the time when they retained four functional limbs,” said Jonathan Geisler, an expert in the evolutionary history of mammals at the New York Institute of Technology. Geisler did not participate in the finding.
The whale was named Phiomicetus Anubis, by the god of death in ancient Egypt.
“We chose the name Anubis because it had a strong, deadly bite,” said Sallam, a professor of paleontology at Manosura University in Egypt.
The new species stands out for its long skull, which suggests it was an efficient carnivore capable of clinging and chewing on its prey, he noted. It measured about three meters (nine feet) long and weighed about 600 kilos, according to researchers.
The discovery came after four years of collaboration between Egyptian and American paleontologists, Sallam added.
His team already had international repercussions in 2018 with his discovery of the mansourasaurus, a new species of long-necked herbivorous dinosaur that lived in what is now the province of Manosura, in the Nile Delta.