An ancient four-legged whale walked across land on hooved toes and swam in the sea like an otter.
The newly discovered species turned up in 2011 in a cache of fossilized bones in Playa Media Luna, a dry coastal area of Peru. Jawbones and teeth pegged it as an ancient cetacean, a member of the whale family. And more bones followed.
“We were definitely surprised to find this type of whale in these layers, but the best surprise was its degree of completeness,” says Olivier Lambert, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels.
Jaw, tooth and spine features, described April 4 in Current Biology, dont quite match anything else in the fossil record, setting the skeleton apart as a new species, dubbed Peregocetus pacificus (meaning “the traveling whale that reached the Pacific Ocean”). At 42.6 million years old, its the oldest whale skeleton found in the New World, though some fossilized whale teeth from North America may be even older.
Big, possibly webbed feet and long toes would have allowed P. pacificus to dog-paddle or swim freestyle. And like modern otters and beavers, this whales vertebrae suggest that its tail also functioned as a paddle. With tiny hooves and strong legs and hips, the animal could walk on land. But “it was definitely a better swimmer than walker,” Lambert says.
Whales got their start on land and gradually adapted tRead More – Source
