17 million-year-old whale fossil found in Turkana

Scientists have discovered the remains of a whale in Turkana County estimated to be 17 million years old.

The whale is said to be about 6.7 metres long and was first discovered in Loperot, West Turkana, by paleontologist James Mead from the US, 30 years ago.

However, the fossils mysteriously disappeared soon after and were re-discovered in Harvard University in 2011, then returned to the Kenya National Museums (KNM) the following year.

An extensive analysis of the skull’s bones at the South Methodist University and the University of Texas, both in the US, proved beyond doubt that it was a beaked whale.

“This discovery has shed light on human evolution and the changes in the landscape in East Africa. The discovery highlights on when the landscape in the part of Africa where these ancestors are thought to have taken their first bipedal steps began to change,” reads a statement from KNM. It adds: “This was important in human evolution from primates as it created the dry open habitats that led our ape-like ancestors to walk upright for the first time.”

The big question then is: how did a whale, a mammal that is mostly found in deep seas find itself in parched and dry Turkana, almost 1,000 kilometres from present coastline?

Dr Fredrick Manthi, a senior research scientist and head of paleontology at KNM said: “This discovery has firmly established the existence of a river that originated somewhere in Turkana and which was connected to the Indian Ocean.”

Dr Manthi, who participated in the analysis of the fossil, said the whale must have got stranded in shallow waters after wandering off from its ocean abode.

The whale was found 740 kilometres inland from the present day coastline of the Indian Ocean at an elevation of 620 metres above sea level. He said at some point in history a section of the ground between the river and the ocean lifted up thus forever cutting the flow of water to the Indian Ocean.

The paleontologist speculated that the whale was an open-ocean whale that got stranded up an east-ward flowing river and was preserved where it died.

The analysis of the fossil was jointly done by scientists from Potsdam University (Germany), KNM and the South Methodist University in the US. They presented their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, one of the top science journals in the world.
The scientists postulated that the Kenyan whale swam for more than 900 kilometres upstream to where it got stranded.

“Regardless of its exact route, the distance the whale swam from the sea to its final stranding was considerable,” the scientists wrote in a journal.

Whales usually live in oceans but sometimes wander into rivers where they get stranded in the shallow waters. In 2007, mother and calf humpback whales travelled 133 kilometres upstream the Sacramento River in California, US.

The whale could have followed the present-day Athi or Tana Rivers which they probably flowed all the way from Turkana before the aridification of much of what is Kenya today.

The Kenyan whale had a beak and smaller mouth and fewer teeth than the present ones, the scientists said in their journal paper.

”The finding confirms Kenya as a key place for paleontological research in the world,” said Dr Mwanthi. The discovery will add to the global reputation of Turkana County as the favourite destination for scientists studying the evolution of species over the years.

In 1984, Turkana came to world attention following the discovery of what is believed to be the most complete skeleton of the early human being.

Nicknamed the Turkana Boy, and now renamed Nariokotome Boy after the exact place it was discovered near Lake Turkana, the fossil is estimated to be between 1.5 and 1.6 million years. It was discovered by Mr Kamoya Kimeu, a member of the renowned paleontologist Richard Leakey’s team.