In Peru have discovered researchers are fossil Remains of a four-legged Ur-whale, the swim as well as the country could run. The Team led by Olivier Lambert from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, describes the specimen in the journal “Current Biology”. The discovery threw light on the early distribution of these prehistoric creatures.
A Fossil from the time when whales and on Land
Office cock-lived of the four-legged great-whale, reaching a length of up to four meters. He was unearthed in 2011 in a coastal area in the South of Peru. From the point of view of the researchers, it is the best-preserved skeleton found outside of India and Pakistan, where they had discovered more fossils of these animals. The Mammal used his legs to be able to country move. The tail, in turn, had an essential function when Swimming, the researchers write.
The left jaw bone of the Ur-whale Peregocetus.Photo: O. Lambert
As the beast maneuvered its body in the different life, reconstructed by the scientists on the basis of the anatomic Details of the skeleton. They found that the arrangement of the caudal vertebrae is similar to approximately those of beavers and otters. This let to a significant contribution of the tail when Swimming close. On the fingers and toes of Ur had a whale of small Hooves. Together with the embodiment of the hips and limbs, this fact would indicate that the Ur-whale is standing on Land, and probably could go.
42-million-year-old
The Fossil was the first of the Ur-whale, which was found in the Pacific, the scientists report. They assume that the animals have distributed before year, millions of South Asia in direction of Africa. From there it went across the Atlantic to the Pacific and to South America.
fossilized bone (a rib) of the Peregocetus have been discovered in Peru, the Playa Media Luna.Photo: G. Bianucci
To fit this hypothesis, the assumed age of the “migratory whale, which reached the Pacific,” the Peregocetus pacificus. The researchers dated the layers of sediment from which they freed the fossils, the age of 42,6 million years to the middle Eocene, which began 55 million years ago and 34 million years ago ended.
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paleontology, The Measurement of the whale
Ruth Wolter
at the Time, the Route across the South Atlantic was shorter than today, since the distance between the two continents was only half as big as it is today. Probably easier surface currents the path of the Ur-whale to South America, where you the direction of North America spread later on. (dpa)