A team of paleontologists unveiled this week in Lima the intact fossil of a basilosaurus skull, a giant carnivorous whale that haunted Peruvian waters 36 million years ago.
“This is a very important find, as there are no similar specimens discovered anywhere in the world”enthused paleontologist Mario Urbina, during the presentation of the fossil at the Museum of Natural History in Lima.
This Basilosaurus skull, in perfect condition, was discovered last year in the Ocucaje desert, the researchers said. This natural site, located 350 km south of Lima, “is an area rich in fossils”, observe Newsweek. “Several million years ago, it was a shallow sea, home to many other strange prehistoric creatures”among “four-legged dwarf whales”.
Ocucaje’s basilosaurus was nothing like a dwarf and looked more like a “sea monster”, according to the description of the paleontologist Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi. The 17-meter-long cetacean was armed with a huge and powerful jaw, and fed on tuna and sharks.
This giant of the seas “had several rows of sharp teeth” and had to do “big damage” when he hunted for food, observes Salas-Gismondi.
Basilosaurus were known to researchers, but the specimen discovered in Peru “differs from other species of the family, owing to its enormous size”precise Newsweek. Descendants of land mammals, “cetaceans became fully aquatic mammals 34 to 56 million years ago”notes the magazine.
As for the “predator of Ocucaje”, as its discoverers nicknamed it, it probably died out, like the other Basilosaurus, 33 million years ago, at the end of the epoch of the ‘Eocene – some 30 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs.