Egyptian scientists say the fossil of a four-legged prehistoric whale, unearthed over a decade ago in the country’s Western Desert, is that of a previously unknown species. The creature, an ancestor of the modern-day whale, is believed to have lived 43 million years ago. The prehistoric whale, known as semi-aquatic because it lived both on land and sea, sported features of an accomplished hunter, the team’s leading paleontologist, Hesham Sallam, told The Associated Press — features that make it stand out among other whale fossils. The fossil was first found by a team of Egyptian environmentalists in 2008 in an area that was covered by seas in prehistoric times, but researchers only published their findings confirming a new species last month. Sallam said that his team did not start examining the fossil until 2017 because he wanted to assemble the best and the most talented Egyptian paleontologists for the study. Read:Fossil leaves may reveal climate in last era of dinosaurs “This is the first time in the history of Egyptian vertebrate paleontology to have an Egyptian team leading a documentation of a new genus and species of four-legged whale,” said Sallam. The fossil sheds light on the evolution of whales from herbivore land mammals into carnivorous species that today live exclusively in water. The transition took place over roughly 10 million years, according to an article published on the discovery in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Egypt’s Western Desert region is already known for the so-called Whale Valley, or Wadi Al-Hitan, a tourist attraction and the country’s only natural World Heritage site that contains fossil remains of another type of prehistoric whales. The newly discovered creature belongs to the family of Protecetids, extinct semi-aquatic whales that lived from 59 to 34 million years ago, Sallam said. It would have walked on land but also hunted in the water. “This is yet another new species of early whales from the time when they retained four functional limbs,” said Jonathan Geisler, an expert on the evolutionary history of mammals with New York Institute of Technology. He said that the location of the discovery in Egypt is also a clue as to when and how they spread around the globe. Geisler was not involved in the find. The oldest fossil whales are about 50 million years old and are believed to have originated in modern-day Pakistan and India. However, scientists have not been able to reach a conclusive answer as to when whales moved out of their point of origin to all the world’s oceans. “This new species by itself cannot answer that question, but when viewed in the context of other fossil discoveries, suggests that this dispersal occurred 43 million years ago,” said Geisler, adding the new find could possibly serve as a link between Indo-Pakistan and North American regions. The fossil whale has been named Phiomicetus Anubis, after the god of death in ancient Egypt. Read:Japan aims to bring back soil samples from Mars moon by 2029 “We chose the name Anubis because it had a strong and deadly bite,” said Sallam, professor of paleontology at Mansoura University in Egypt. “It could kill any creature it crossed paths with.” The new species stands out for its elongated skull and snout that suggest it was an efficient carnivore capable of grasping and chewing its prey, he said. It was about 3 meters (9 feet long) and weighed around 600 kilograms, according to researchers. It is also believed to have had sharp hearing and sense of smell. The discovery followed a four-year collaboration between Egyptian paleontologists and U.S-based scientists, Sallam added. His team has previously made headlines worldwide with their 2018 discovery of Mansourasaurus, a new species of long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs that lived in the Nile Delta province of Mansoura.

Richard Barclay opens a metal drawer in archives of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum containing fossils that are nearly 100 million years old. Despite their age, these rocks aren’t fragile. The geologist and botanist handles them with casual ease, placing one in his palm for closer examination. Embedded in the ancient rock is a triangular leaf with rounded upper lobes. This leaf fell off a tree around the time that T-rex and triceratops roamed prehistoric forests, but the plant is instantly recognizable. “You can tell this is ginkgo, it’s a unique shape,” said Barclay. “It hasn’t changed much in many millions of years.” What’s also special about ginkgo trees is that their fossils often preserve actual plant material, not simply a leaf’s impression. And that thin sheet of organic matter may be key to understanding the ancient climate system — and the possible future of our warming planet. But Barclay and his team first need to crack the plant’s code to read information contained in the ancient leaf. Read: China dinosaur footprint fossil named after Doraemon's "Nobita" “Ginkgo is a pretty unique time capsule,” said Peter Crane, a Yale University paleobotanist. As he wrote in “Ginkgo,” his book on the plant, “It is hard to imagine that these trees, now towering above cars and commuters, grew up with the dinosaurs and have come down to us almost unchanged for 200 million years.” If a tree fell in an ancient forest, what can it tell scientists today? “The reason scientists look back in the past is to understand what’s coming in the future,” said Kevin Anchukaitis, a climate researcher at the University of Arizona. “We want to understand how the planet has responded in the past to large-scale changes in climate — how ecosystems changed, how ocean chemistry and sea levels changed, how forests worked.” Of particular interest to scientists are “ hothouse ” periods when they believe carbon levels and temperatures were significantly higher than today. One such time occurred during the late Cretaceous period (66 million to 100 million years ago), the last era of the dinosaurs before a meteor slammed into Earth and most species went extinct. Learning more about hothouse climates also gives scientists valuable data to test the accuracy of climate models for projecting the future, says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech University. But climate information about the distant past is limited. Air bubbles trapped in ancient ice cores allow scientists to study ancient carbon dioxide levels, but those only go back about 800,000 years. That’s where the Smithsonian’s collection of ginkgo leaves come in. Down a warren of corridors, Barclay hops across millennia – as is only possible in a museum – to the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution had started changing the climate. From a cabinet, he withdraws sheets of paper where Victorian-era scientists taped and tied ginkgo leaves plucked from botanical gardens of their time. Many specimens have labels written in beautiful cursive, including one dated Aug. 22, 1896. Read:120,000-year-old fossils in Israel link to human family tree The leaf shape is virtually identical to the fossil from around 100 million years ago, and to a modern leaf Barclay holds in his hand. But one key difference can be viewed with a microscope — how the leaf has responded to changing carbon in the air. Tiny pores on a leaf’s underside are arranged to take in carbon dioxide and respire water, allowing the plant to transform sunlight into energy. When there’s a lot of carbon in the air, the plant needs fewer pores to absorb the carbon it needs. When carbon levels drop, the leaves produce more pores to compensate. Today, scientists know the global average level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 410 parts per million – and Barclay knows what that makes the leaf look like. Thanks to the Victorian botanical sheets, he knows what ginkgo leaves looked like before humans had significantly transformed the planet’s atmosphere. Now he wants to know what pores in the fossilized ginkgo leaves can tell him about the atmosphere 100 million years ago. But first he needs a codebreaker, a translation sheet — sort of a Rosetta stone to decipher the handwriting of the ancient atmosphere. That’s why he’s running an experiment in a forest clearing in Maryland. One morning earlier this year, Barclay and project assistant Ben Lloyd tended rows of ginkgo trees within open-topped enclosures of plastic sheeting that expose them to rain, sunlight and changing seasons. “We are growing them this way so the plants experience natural cycles,” Barclay said. The researchers adjust the carbon dioxide pumped into each chamber, and an electronic monitor outside flashes the levels every five seconds. Read:Weird ‘living fossil’ fish lives 100 years, pregnant for 5 Some trees are growing at current carbon dioxide levels. Others are growing at significantly elevated levels, approximating levels in the distant past, or perhaps the future. “We’re looking for analogues — we need something to compare with,” said Barclay. If there’s a match between what the leaves in the experiment look like and what the fossil leaves look like, that will give researchers a rough guide to the ancient atmosphere. They also are studying what happens when trees grow in super-charged environments, and they found that more carbon dioxide makes them grow faster. But adds Barclay, “If plants grow very quickly, they are more likely to make mistakes and be more susceptible to damage. ... It’s like a race car driver that’s more likely to go off the rails at high speeds.”