When you purchase through link on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .
A 17 - million - class - onetime beak whale fossil is helping researchers solve a puzzle about the probable birthplace of manhood in East Africa , a newfangled study find .
The whale ( Ziphiidae ) lived when the East African plateau was substantially lower and traverse by dense forest , the investigator said . Scientists have long tried to figure out when the upthrust occur , because when it did , the wet from the Indian Ocean could no longer reach the trees and vegetation , and the orbit turned into a savanna , enquiry suggests .
The fossilized skull of the 17-million-year old beaked whale found in modern-day Kenya.
out antecedent to modern humansmay have hold out in treesin East Africa , but after the area turned into grassland , these other humans step by step begin walking on two feet , researchers suggest . [ Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans ]
" It ’s more or less the narrative about thebipedalism , " said written report researcher Henry Wichura , a postdoctoral candidate in geoscience at University of Potsdam in Germany .
But the timing of the East African tableland upthrow has elude scientists . The whale fossil helps researchers get confining to that particular date , which likely occurred sometime between 17 million and 13.5 million years ago , harmonize to the unexampled report .
Researcher James Mead, as he uncovered the whale fossil in Loperot, Kenya, in 1964.
A whale of a tale
The story of thewhale skullis one of rediscovery . Researchers primitively found the fossil in 1964 , but did n’t put out a study on it until 1975 . Then , they misplaced the skull until 2011 .
The skull is the oldest known fossil of a peck whale , and it confounded researcher at first . Beaked giant are cryptic divers that live in the ocean , but the fossil was found 460 miles ( 740 kilometers ) inland from the present - day East African seacoast , and at an elevation of 2,100 feet ( 640 meter ) .
Perhaps the 23 - foot - long ( 7 m ) whale used to dwell in theIndian Ocean , but mistakenly ramble into a river that led it into New - daytime Kenya , the study researchers said .
" We came to the idea that it used a great river system , because the whale had been find in lake sediment which are [ miscellaneous with ] river sediments , " Wichura said . " So we can say that it died in a kind of river - lake surround . "
But the fogy sit uncontrived for well-nigh 40 yr , until investigator rediscovered it at Harvard University . ( Interestingly , a curator obtain the fossil in the former office of renowned paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould . At the fourth dimension , the university was using Gould ’s office for irregular storage during a remodel , according to the study . )
Once retrieve , the skull help Wichura and his confrere date the East African tableland ’s uplift . They wondered how low the East African tableland was before the region ’s topography changed , so they searched for other instances ofwhalesgetting lost in rivers . For instance , one hulk became run aground in the Thames River in 2006 , and killer whales have swum into the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest of the United States .
The scientists rent the level of the steepest river from case reports , and applied it to the prehistoric river used by the whale . So , if the ancient river rise at 2.5 inches a Roman mile ( 4 centimeters per km ) from the coast , the East African plateau was between 79 feet and 121 feet eminent ( 24 m and 37 m ) at the time the giant lose its manner and snuff it . ( The divergence in pinnacle takes into account the dissimilar routes the giant may have taken to swim inland from the Indian Ocean . )
deliberate that the tableland is now about 2,034 feet ( 620 m ) tall , the northern part of the Eastern African plateau must have been uplift by about 1,925 feet ( 590 m ) over the retiring 17 million years , the researchers square off .
Furthermore , Wichura found that at 13.5 million year ago , part of the easterly African tableland uplift had already begin , putting a bookend on when the uplift started . ( He note that the upthrust take place because ofmantle feather , live material that rises through the Earth ’s mantle and promote up against the crust . )
Without the rediscovered skull , it would have been difficult to help date the upthrust , he said .
" With the giant , everything embark on , " Wichura say Live Science .
The sketch remind both professional and amateur paleontologists to study the location and eld of each fossil they see , said Frank Brown , a professorof geology at the University of Utah , who was not involve in the study .
" Even undivided specimen of being tell us a dandy deal about the history of the Earth , and they sometimes seem in surprising cases , " Brown pronounce . " This is one such case . "
The written report was published today ( March 16 ) in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
