Whales in the desert - page 1

Treasure hunt in Peru

On the coast of Peru, 200 km from the capital Lima, lies the Pisco area. The Pacific Ocean borders the Pisco-Ica basin, a chain of 14 geological formations from 14 to 3.5 million years old, over a length of 200 km. This exceptional desert area was once part of the ocean floor. The land was pushed upwards by movements in the earth’s crust, and now sits about a hundred metres above sea level.

Along with the seabed the remains of millions of years of sea life have also been pushed up. This is why the area is exceptionally rich in fossils, which the wind gradually exposes in the shifting sands. Mario Urbina Schmitt and Rodolfo Salas Gismondi of the University of San Marcos in Lima and their team of palaeontologists have built up an extremely diverse collection of fossilised vertebrates. The finds include the fossilised skeletons of whales, seals, dolphins, turtles, sharks, penguins and even sloths, which swam around in the coastal water millions of years ago.

However, the university simply doesn’t have enough specialists to research all of these discoveries itself. So they have called in specialists from our museum to lend a helping hand, especially on the subject of dolphins.

And this is right up the street of Olivier Lambert, a palaeontologist at our museum. Olivier has been at the museum for 7 years, and has taken part in several expeditions in search of prehistoric mammals, dinosaurs, and much more. But his favourite topic is the order of the cetaceans, and his main specialty is research into dolphins. Though he has carried out most of his research on dolphin fossils from the North Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean until now, he was more than happy to take up the Peruvian University’s invitation.

Olivier joins Mario and a team of palaeontologists from several countries on their search for cetaceans in the fossil-rich coastal areas of Peru. “Of course, you can’t bring everything back with you’, Olivier tells us. “For example, sometimes you find whales up to 15 or 20m long, and they are difficult transport. Most of what we bring back now are the things that will be useful to our research. Other finds will be picked up later!” Besides the fieldwork Olivier also helps study the existing collections in the University’s labs in Lima.