40-Million-Year-Old 'Walking Whale' Fossil Found In Peru

minty3 writes "Found in the Ocucaje Desert in southern Peru, the fossils belong to a group called Achaeocetes, or ancient whales, that possess both land and sea-dwelling characteristics. Over time, the ancient land animals adapted to water environments where their legs became fin-like and their bodies began to resemble modern sea mammals like dolphins and whales."

Comments

That's Archaeocetes!

[palemantle]

Archaeocetes = ancient whales. Achaeocetes = typo. Is a basic spell check too much to ask?

Re:That's Archaeocetes!

[I'm New Around Here]

Let me put it this way: If your first language is any of { english, french, italian, spanish, ... } - you should have an instinctive feel for the spelling of Latin. If not, well, sorry boy-o, but you're a rube.

Except for two points:

A) English is more Germanic based than Latin based. So we aren't particularly strong in old-time Latin. That's why we actually make up words that have one root in Latin and one in Greek, and can't see the problem.

B) Most of our Latin comes from French, and not the modern form of it at that, but Old French. Old French is itself a bastardized form of Latin, and the native Gaul tongue had some role in it.

So, with these aspects of English being what they are, it's hardly surprising if we see little relation from our modern words to their original form in ancient Rome.

Re:Huge teeth

[Gavagai80]

Nor are modern whales. Some even eat other species of whales.

Dodgy Source

[ozbon]

It's probably worth pointing out that the original story is an interview in the Daily Mail ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2423358/Walking-whale-fossil-dating-40M-YEARS-discovered-Peru.html )

That makes it about as trustworthy and reliable as stories on Fox News

Re:Dodgy Source

[Sockatume]

Nope, you need to go deeper. They're reporting it from Euronews:

http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/14/peru-discovers-whale-fossils-in-desert-dating-back-40-million-years/