The fossil of a 43-million-year-old whale with four legs, webbed feet and hooves has been discovered in Peru.<\/p>\n
Palaeontologists believe the marine mammal’s four-metre-long (13 ft) body was adapted to swim and walk on land.<\/p>\n
With four limbs capable of carrying its weight and a powerful tail, the semi-aquatic whale has been compared to an otter or a beaver.<\/p>\n
Researchers believe the discovery could shed light on the evolution of the whale and how it spread.<\/p>\n
“This is the most complete specimen ever found for a four-legged whale outside of India and Pakistan,” Dr Olivier Lambert, a scientist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and co-author of the study, said.<\/p>\n
It was found in marine sediments 1km (0.6 miles) inland from Peru’s Pacific coast, at Playa Media Luna.<\/p>\n
The location has piqued researchers’ interest as the first whales are thought to have first evolved in South Asia around 50 million years ago.<\/p>\n
As their bodies became better suited to water, they migrated further afield to North Africa and North America, where fossils have been found.<\/p>\n
The latest discovery suggests early whales managed to swim there from South America.<\/p>\n
“Whales are this iconic example of evolution,” Travis Park, an ancient whale researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, said.<\/p>\n
“They went from small hoofed mammals to the blue whale we have today. It’s so interesting to see how they conquered the oceans.”<\/p>\n
An international team of palaeontologists from Peru, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium excavated the fossil in 2011.<\/p>\n
They have named it\u00a0Peregocetus pacificus<\/i>, meaning “the travelling whale that reached the Pacific”.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The fossil of a 43-million-year-old whale with four legs, webbed feet and hooves has been discovered in Peru. Palaeontologists believe the marine mammal’s four-metre-long (13 ft) body was adapted to swim and walk on land. With four limbs capable of carrying its weight and a powerful tail, the semi-aquatic whale has been compared to an …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8679,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8680,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678\/revisions\/8680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}