How I Discovered a 40-Million-Year-Old Whale in Kitchen Limestone

Late one night last September , I received a phone call from a stranger . The gentleman’s gentleman , the owner of a stone - cutting workshop near Cairo , told me he had seen something foreign — some kind of fossil — while slicing into a large pulley block of limestone that was to be used in build a kitchen . As a professional palaeontologist with a popularFacebook page , I ’m always happy to get pourboire from the public on potential fossil discoveries . But when this man sent me photos of the limestone gore , I immediately bring in he had something priceless .

I specialize in studying nonextant hulk , and from my first glances at the images , I knew this would be an significant data point in the evolutionary history of cetaceans . I am the lab manager of Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center ( MUVP ) , the first and only center of its kind in North Africa and the Middle East . I study marine mammals , especially whale fossils that show how live cetaceans are the solution of more than 50 million years of evolution , which transformed a radical of small , hoofed , deer - like sublunar mammals into the fully aquatic leviathans of today .

I rushed to show the photograph to my supervisor , Hesham Sallam ( film director of MUVP centre and helper professor of palaeontology in Mansoura University ) , who was equally dazzled by what he saw . We set up to go see the limestone blocks in someone the very next morning . I could n’t slumber that night , I was so eager to see these fossils .

A limestone slab containing the fossilized skull of an extinct, amphibious whale.

A limestone slab containing the fossilized skull of an extinct, amphibious whale.Photo: Abdullah Gohar

At dayspring , we made the three - hr driving force to the shop of Mohamed Barakat . When I search at the specimen , I was shocked by how gorgeous and well - preserve it was . It appear that the bones belong to an Archaeoceti , a radical of the precursor of modern whales and mahimahi , but to really study this heavyweight , we ’d need to get it back to our lab .

Large fossils compromise the strength of cut stone , so decorative stone incorporate fogy is often considered faulty and discarded . However , Barakat already had an offer from a buyer who wanted the slabs for his kitchen . Sallam and I began explaining how valuable this fossil would be to our piece of work . Fortunately , Barakat ’s response was : “ I donate these slabs to you for more scientific research , for free . ” We thank him extravagantly .

With the assistant of seven people , a wheeled cart , and , mercifully , an elevator , we act the five one-quarter - gross ton panels to our science laboratory , where the rest of the team was waiting for us . Right away , I began wreak on this enigmatical fogy . I want to know : Is it like to antecedently fuck Egyptian heavyweight ? Or it is a unexampled species entirely ? Egypt is very of import in the chronicle of whale evolution . Wadi El‐Hitan ( “ Valley of Whales ” ) is an area within the Fayum Province of Egypt that for many ten has been famous for producing abundant remains of Eocene whales , such as Basilosaurus . Up to now , fossils from Egypt have let on 11 unlike coinage of nonextant giant .

Photo: Hesham Sallam

The author examining the fossils for the first time.Photo: Hesham Sallam

The only data uncommitted from Barakat about the source of the limestone was that it came from Shaikh Fadl in Upper Egypt . Tracking the sale of the block and consultation with local prof point it came from 40 - million - yr - erstwhile limestone at a prey in Wadi Tarfa . ( This same prey was also the source of a block of limestone that , in 2011 , was found to contain a antecedently unknown metal money of ancient whale , Aegyptocetus tarfa . This dodo was only get a line after the block was imported to Italy and cut into plates of decorative facing stone . )

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed mostly of Ca carbonate fossils , and it form when marine creatures , sand , and mud are deposited at the bottom of oceans and over prison term solidify . Whale carcass be adrift after death due to a buildup of gun during initial decomposition , but finally they slide down to the sea floor . When this ancient hulk died during the process of limestone forming , it ended up as a fossil .

We soon determine that the bones belonged to Protocetidae , a group of Eocene giant that symbolize a unequalled stride in cetaceous evolution and are the predecessors of New heavyweight and dolphin . Its corpse admit a everlasting skull , mandible , most of its guts , limb , and rib . These amphibian species still had brawny branch that could support them on land as well as power them through water . Our specimen appears to have been a self-aggrandising whale , larger than most other amphibian hulk — it was perhaps 5 meters ( 16 feet ) long and or so 900 kilograms ( 1,900 pounds ) , but I can not say for certain .

Photo: Abdullah Gohar

Transporting the blocks from the workshop to our lab. It was a difficult and exhausting process.Photo: Abdullah Gohar

We ’re call the specimen the “ Barakat hulk , ” respect its original view finder , or the “ Kitchen hulk . ” This animal is alone among other ancient amphibian whales , and we believe it represents a new genus and species . In the good hereafter , we hope to take apart the “ Kitchen whale ” in greater item . By looking at its anatomic features alongside the results of phyletic psychoanalysis , we can image out the military position of this creature in the evolutionary tree of whale . We are also work out to devise a way to make a 3D model of the novel materials , include delicate inner structures , for further scientific studies .

Abdullah Gohar is the lab manager of Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center and a master ’s student in relative anatomy and vertebrate paleontology . He is the first ArabianYouTuberever to utter about fossils and vertebrate paleontology .

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Photo: Abdullah Gohar