The skull of an enormous marine predator thought to be the progenitor of modern whales and dolphins has been unearthed.
The skull is lined with knife-like teeth and appears to be a new species of ferocious marine mammals that lived 36 million years ago.
The creature was about the size of a city bus from snout to tail.
It won't be formally named until the team publishes a scientific description of the species in a peer-reviewed journal.
Rodolfo Salas, founder and director of the paleontology department at the Museum of Natural History at UNMSM, said at a news conference on March 17 that it was a marine monster.
There are 25 amazing ancient beasts.
Basilosaurus and its ferocious cousins swam these seas as apex predators from 41 million to 34 million years ago, gliding through the water with bodies that looked enormous.
Ernesto Benavides is a photographer.
Basilosaurus means "king lizard" and the creature's skeleton was once mistaken for a marine reptile.
Scientists now know thatBasilosaurus was a cetacean, like the whales and dolphins that followed it millions of years later.
Live Science previously reported that whales evolved to be semi-aquatic over millions of years.
After the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, whale ancestors became fully aquatic, giving rise to the first cetaceans.
There are more than 90 species of cetaceans.
Some of the fossils in the desert are more than 42 million years old.
Other early whale ancestors, dolphins, sharks, and other creatures have been found in previous excavations.
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The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
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