Valley of the Whales
An Egyptian desert holds hundreds of skeletons of whales that still had legs.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 6 million years
- Known to
- ± 2 million years
- Era
- Eocene, Cenozoic
Wadi Al-Hitan in the Western Desert preserves the richest concentration of archaeocete whales anywhere, laid down when the area was the floor of the Tethys. The skeletons of Basilosaurus and Dorudon are articulated and abundant, and crucially many retain small but complete hind limbs — femur, tibia, foot — far too small for walking and probably used in mating. Nowhere else shows so plainly that whales are land mammals that went back to the water. It became a World Heritage Site in 2005.