A 16-million-year-old fossil skull of a river dolphin has been discovered in Peru by scientists. Its closest living relative is the South Asian river dolphin found in India’s Ganges River.
Paleontologist Rodolfo Salas stated that the skull belongs to the largest dolphin known to have inhabited the waters of South America.
Named “Pebanista yacuruna” after a Peruvian mythological creature, the Yacuruna, the dolphin measures between three to three and a half meters in length and once lived in the waters of today’s Amazon.
“This dolphin is related to the dolphin of the Ganges river in India,” said Salas, emphasizing that the dolphin found in Peru is much larger than its living relatives in Asia.
He added that the ancestors of both dolphins previously lived in the ocean.
“This allowed them to occupy large oceanic spaces near the coasts of India and South America. These animals lived in freshwater environments in the Amazon and in India. Unfortunately, they became extinct in the Amazon, but survived in India,” Salas noted, AA writes.
Photo: AA
