WASHINGTON: Paleontologists have found a well-preserved fossil of a four-legged amphibious ancestor of whales, a discovery that sheds new light on the mammals’ transition from land to the ocean.
The ancestors of whales and dolphins walked on Earth about 50 million years ago in the regions that now comprise India and Pakistan.
Paleontologists have previously found partial fossils of the species in North America that were 41.2 million years old suggesting that by this time, the cetaceans had lost the ability to carry their own weight and walk the Earth.
The new specimen, described in a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, is 42.6 million years old and provides fresh information on the evolution of cetaceans.
The fossil was found about 0.6 miles (one kilometer) inland from Peru’s Pacific coast, at Playa Media Luna.
Its mandibles grazed the desert soil and during excavations, the researchers found the lower jaw, teeth, vertebrae, ribs, parts of front and back legs, and even the whale ancestor’s long fingers that were likely webbed.
Based on its anatomy, the scientists say this cetacean of about 13 feet (four meters) long could both walk and swim.
“Part of the tail’s vertebrae showed similarities with that of present-day semi-aquatic mammals like otters,” lead author Olivier Lambert of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences told AFP.
“This would therefore have been an animal that would have started to make growing use of its tail to swim, which differentiates it from older cetaceans in India and Pakistan.”
Pieces of four-legged whales were found in Egypt, Nigeria, Togo, Senegal and Western Sahara, but they were so fragmented that it was impossible to decisively conclude whether they could swim.
“This is the most complete specimen ever found for a four-legged whale outside of India and Pakistan,” said Lambert.
If the whale in Peru could swim like an otter, the researchers hypothesized that it likely crossed the Atlantic from the western coast of Africa to South America. As a result of continental drift, the distance was half that of today, around 800 miles, and the east-west current of the time would have facilitated their travel.
This finding would make less likely another hypothesis according to which whales reached North America via Greenland.
The Pisco Basin, off Peru’s southern coast, likely holds numerous fossils, given its excellent conditions for preservation.
“We have work for at least the next 50 years,” said Lambert, the paleontologist.
Four-legged prehistoric whale fossil found in Peru
Four-legged prehistoric whale fossil found in Peru
- The new specimen, described in a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, is 42.6 million years old and provides fresh information on the evolution of cetaceans
Filipinos master disaster readiness, one roll of the dice at a time
- In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon
MANILA: In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon.
The teenagers huddled around the table leap into action, shouting instructions and acting out the correct strategies for just one of the potential catastrophes laid out in the board game called Master of Disaster.
With fewer than half of Filipinos estimated to have undertaken disaster drills or to own a first-aid kit, the game aims to boost lagging preparedness in a country ranked the most disaster-prone on earth for four years running.
“(It) features disasters we’ve been experiencing in real life for the past few months and years,” 17-year-old Ansherina Agasen told AFP, noting that flooding routinely upends life in her hometown of Valenzuela, north of Manila.
Sitting in the arc of intense seismic activity called the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” the Philippines endures daily earthquakes and is hit by an average of 20 typhoons each year.
In November, back-to-back typhoons drove flooding that killed nearly 300 people in the archipelago nation, while a 6.9-magnitude quake in late September toppled buildings and killed 79 people around the city of Cebu.
“We realized that a lot of loss of lives and destruction of property could have been avoided if people knew about basic concepts related to disaster preparedness,” Francis Macatulad, one of the game’s developers, told AFP of its inception.
The Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST), where Macatulad heads business development, first dreamt up the game in 2013, after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines and left thousands dead.
Launched six years later, Master of Disaster has been updated this year to address more events exacerbated by human-driven climate change, such as landslides, drought and heatwaves.
More than 10,000 editions of the game, aimed at players as young as nine years old, have been distributed across the archipelago nation.
“The youth are very essential in creating this disaster resiliency mindset,” Macatulad said.
‘Keeps on getting worse’
While the Philippines has introduced disaster readiness training into its K-12 curriculum, Master of Disaster is providing a jolt of innovation, Bianca Canlas of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) told AFP.
“It’s important that it’s tactile, something that can be touched and can be seen by the eyes of the youth so they can have engagement with each other,” she said of the game.
Players roll a dice to move their pawns across the board, with each landing spot corresponding to cards containing questions or instructions to act out disaster-specific responses.
When a player is unable to fulfil a task, another can “save” them and receive a “hero token” — tallied at the end to determine a winner.
At least 27,500 deaths and economic losses of $35 billion have been attributed to extreme weather events in the past two decades, according to the 2026 Climate Risk Index.
“It just keeps on getting worse,” Canlas said, noting the lives lost in recent months.
The government is now determining if it will throw its weight behind the distribution of the game, with the sessions in Valenzuela City serving as a pilot to assess whether players find it engaging and informative.
While conceding the evidence was so far anecdotal, ASSIST’s Macatulad said he believed the game was bringing a “significant” improvement in its players’ disaster preparedness knowledge.
“Disaster is not picky. It affects from north to south. So we would like to expand this further,” Macatulad said, adding that poor communities “most vulnerable to the effects of climate change” were the priority.
“Disasters can happen to anyone,” Agasen, the teen, told AFP as the game broke up.
“As a young person, I can share the knowledge I’ve gained... with my classmates at school, with people at home, and those I’ll meet in the future.”
