Scientists have unearthed fossils in a coastal desert of southern Peru of a four-legged whale that thrived both in the sea and on land about 43 million years ago in a discovery that illuminates a pivotal stage in early cetacean evolution. Its four limbs were capable of bearing its weight on land, meaning
WASHINGTON - Scientists have unearthed fossils in a coastal desert of southern Peru of a four-legged whale that thrived both in the sea and on land about 43 million years ago in a discovery that illuminates a pivotal stage in early cetacean evolution.
Its four limbs were capable of bearing its weight on land, meaning Peregocetus could return to the rocky coast to rest and perhaps give birth while spending much of its time at sea. Its feet and hands had small hooves and probably were webbed to aid in swimming. With long fingers and toes, and relatively slender limbs, moving around on land may not have been easy.
"We think that it was feeding in the water, and that its underwater locomotion was easier than that on land," said Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences paleontologist Olivier Lambert, who led the research published in the journal Current Biology. Whale evolutionary origins were poorly understood until the 1990s when fossils of the earliest whales were found. Various fossils have shown that whales evolved a bit more than 50 million years ago in Pakistan and India from hoofed, land-dwelling mammals distantly related to hippos and about the size of a medium-sized dog. It took millions of years for them to spread around the world.
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