Scientists reveal 16-million-year-old fossilised skull of ancient Amazon river Dolphin
Dolphin
Scientists have unearthed the fossilised skull of a huge river dolphinwhich is now extinct. The dolphin would have been up to 3.5 metres long, making it the largest river dolphin yet discovered.
Experts previously believed that this river dolphin abandoned the ocean and sought safety in Peru's Amazonian rivers 16 million years ago.
The study, titled, "The largest freshwater odontocete: A South Asian river dolphin relative from the proto-Amazonia", has been published in Science Advances.
According to the study, the skull and other fossils of the ancient river dolphin were discovered in Rio Napo, Loreto, Peru in 2018. They date back over 16.5 million years to the Early to Middle Miocene.
The dolphin has been named Pebanista yacuruna gen. et sp. nov.
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The lead author of a new study said that the fresh analysis highlights the rising risks to the world's last river dolphins. The author also said that these dolphins face identical extinction threats over the next 20 to 40 years.
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Study author Aldo Benites-Palomino said that P. yacuruna belonged to the Platanistoidea family of dolphins, which were commonly found in oceans between 24 million and 16 million years ago.
As quoted in media reports, Benites-Palomino said that the surviving river dolphins were "the remnants of what were once greatly diverse marine dolphin groups".
He further added that the mentioned marine dolphin groups are thought to have left the oceans on their long journey of finding new food sources in freshwater rivers.
"Rivers are the escape valve … for the ancient fossil we found, and it is the same for all river dolphins living today," he said as quoted in reports.
Benites-Palomino spotted part of the fossil while walking with a colleague. It was a fragment of the jaw. He said, "As soon as I recognised it, I saw the teeth sockets. I screamed, 'This is a dolphin'. We could not believe it."
“Then we realised it was not related to the Amazon river pink dolphin,” he said. “We [had] found an animal, a giant, whose closest living relative is 10,000 km away in south-east Asia.”