A newly identified ancient skull found in Peru has revealed an extinct giant called Pebanista yacuruna that offers insight into the evolution of freshwater dolphins.
— Picture a dolphin. Now imagine one that’s twice the size of a person. Around 16 million years ago, a dolphin giant cruised the depths of its watery domain. But unlike most modern dolphins, its home wasn’t an ocean; it lived in a freshwater lake in the Peruvian Amazon. And though there are Amazonian freshwater dolphin species alive today, they aren’t close kin to that ancient cetacean.
Flynn, a curator of fossil mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, pointed out what looked like a skull jutting from an embankment. “I said: ‘Hey, John, does this connect to this piece that I have in my hand?’” Benites-Palomino recalled. What he held turned out to be a rostrum — the rounded tip of a nose — from the embedded skull. As they cleaned it up enough to see the shapes of tooth sockets, Benites-Palomino realized that they were looking at something unusual.
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