Whale Found in Desert

A well presevered whale skeleton has been discovered in the Wadi Hitan desert in Egypt. The whale is over 50 feet(18 meters) long and 40 milion years old. The skeleton has been identified as Basilosaurus. The whale still has remains of tiny useless legs and unlike modern whales it has no blowhole. Instead, it had to raise its head above the water to breathe. Other discoveries in Wadi Hitan include five species of whales, three species of sea cows, two crocidiles and several turtles.

U-M
The new skeleton is 18 meters (50 feet) long and was found in Wadi Hitan in the Western Sahara of Egypt. The first Basilosaurus fossil was found in 1905 but no full skeleton has been discovered until now.

The new skeleton of Basilosaurus will be shipped to Michigan for preparation and preservation, Gingerich said, via email. It then will be replicated in a casting material suitable for reconstruction and exhibition of the complete skeleton. The original fossil bones and a complete cast will be returned to Egypt for exhibition in public museums in Cairo and in the Wadi Hitan visitors center. Gingerich also hopes that a complete cast can be mounted in the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum.

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just le the sahara it was obviously a sea at one point.

Well, you weren't expecting to see a LIVE whale in the desert, were you?

(begins serious tone now) This is a pretty cool find, though, it means that there was a very significant body of water there at one time. I am unaware of any whales that are found outside an ocean, so it looks like that at least part of the western Sahara used to be connected to the ocean 40 million years ago.

Interesting find. This Basilosaurus looks pretty mean. I wonder if it was a preditor, it looks like it has the teeth for it.
Could be Nessie's cousin

You can see how far modern whales have evolved, that blowhole is real handy.

I like the part where they list the other things they've found. This isn't even weird for them!

I was just wandering about if any dinosaurs has ever been found in the desert but I guess I got my question answer with this, and on top of that a whale in the sand, that tells a lot about how the world used to be in ancient times.

I wonder what else is in the desert under all the sand, lost cities and more bones of long ago animals.

I dunno about cities (although you could argue Ancient Egypt was a 'lost civilization' in some ways) but 5 species of whales, 3 species of seacows, 2 crocs and a bunch of turtles counts as "bones of long ago animals" to me!