Discovered Fossil of whale with four legs

The find in the desert of Ocucaje located in Ica in southern Peru, a four-legged whale, has surprised the international and local scientific community, since these cetaceans are native to South Asia, it is strange to imagine how they came to stop at 43 million years ago.

This whale has legs, hind legs, the current whales have lost their legs completely, the hind legs are complete, they have femur, warm talus, calcaneus, very long phalanges, even have the tips of the most distal phalanges, they are preserved and they indicate that this animal could be stopped on land, then it was an animal that lived both in the water and on land and that used the legs to support its weight on land and the tail for example is a very long tail and that is a little modified similar to the one of an otter for example, that uses the tail to swim; this tail was also used to swim like the legs; these animals had both capacity, the ability to swim in a very effective way at sea, proof of this, is that they could cross oceans and the ability to walk on land because their legs are still sufficiently well formed; the pelvis and sacrum are also quite shaped like those of a terrestrial animal;

said Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, Insvestigator and Professor at the Cayetano Heredia University.

The experts are surprised, because the fossil was found whole and very far from its place of origin;

It was found stuck in a very fine sediment, a very fine silt, that still in a kind of very calm lagoons, protected and when I found it, I found some fingers coming out of the sand, which were in articulated form, I knew that this is the key to know that the animal was fossilized and I did not want to leave the place, without knowing if it is in the lead and I found jaws and found a piece of my head that had eroded, but this animal it's really quite big and finding it whole is more strange, because in the countries where they have found, it is usually found in bits,

Said Mario Urbina Schimitt, discoverer of the four-legged fossil.

The fossil was found in a desert area, 500 meters from the Media Luna beach, Ica.

Thanks to a single bone of the fossil, the Astragalus can be verified that the cetaceans originated from very primitive Artiodactyls; This bone indicates that the cetaceans are related to the Artiodactyla, that is to say, to the hippos and to the pigs, and that is something incredible, since it was suggested by the molecular data, but the fossils prove that it is true, that the cetaceans, Dolphins and whales are related to hippos and pigs,

said Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, Insvestigator and Professor at the Cayetano Heredia University.

The shape of its bones also allows us to calculate how old our Pacific pilgrim was; In this animal all the bones are completely welded and what indicates that it is an adult animal, probably it is a young adult because the teeth are not so worn out.

The fossil research topic will focus on the biomechanics and functional anatomy of the whale involving researchers from the natural history museum of the National University of San Marcos and of Belgium, France and Italy.