Whale fossil dates East Africa "uplift".

PositionPaleontology

Uplift associated with the Great Rift Valley of East Africa and the environmental changes it produced have puzzled scientists for decades because the timing and starting elevation have been poorly constrained. Now, paleontologists have tapped a fossil from the most precisely dated beaked whale in the world--and the only stranded whale ever found so far inland on the African continent--to pinpoint for the first time a date when East Africa's mysterious elevation began.

The 17,000,000-year-old fossil is from the beaked Ziphiidae whale family, although the bones originally were thought to be those of a turtle speciman. It was discovered 740 kilometers inland at an elevation of 620 meters in modern Kenya's harsh desert region, relates vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. At the time the whale was alive, it would have been swimming far inland up a river with a low gradient ranging from 24 to 37 meters over more than 600 to 900 kilometers, explains Jacobs, coauthor of the study.

The study provides the first constraint on the start of uplift of East African terrain from near sea level. 'The whale was stranded upriver at a time when East Africa was at sea level and was covered with forest and jungle. As that part of the continent rose up, that caused the climate to become drier and drier. So, over millions of years, forest gave way to grasslands. Primates...

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