42-Million-Year-Old Fossil of Four-Legged Whale With Hooves Discovered
The fossil of a 42.6-million year-old whale has just been discovered off the coast of Peru, but it’s no ordinary cetacean. This fossil belonged to a creature with four legs and hooves at the tip of its fingers and toes — a whale capable of walking on land, with a tail and webbed feet that suggest it was also a powerful swimmer. This 13-foot-long animal is considered by the scientific community to be a prime example of the evolution of hoofed mammals into the whales we know today.