14 DAY TRIAL // The fossilized remains of three ancient dolphins were recovered not too long ago from Peru's Pisco-Ica desert, and researchers strongly suspect that they belong to a previously undocumented species.
In fact, specialist Olivier Lambert with the Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique and fellow researchers are so convinced that this is indeed the case that they have even settled on a name for these animals: Huaridelphis raimondii.
In a paper published in the journal Vertebrate Paleontology this past September 9, the researchers detail that the dolphin remains found in Peru's Pisco-Ica desert include two surprisingly well-preserved skulls.
It was after analyzing these skulls in detail that the researchers concluded that the fossils were left behind by a previously undocumented species belonging to a now-extinct family known to the scientific community as squalodelphinids.
“The quality of the fossils places these specimens as some of the best-preserved members of this rare family,” researcher Olivier Lambert said in a statement, as cited by Live Science.
It is believed that the dolphins inhabiting the Indus and Ganges rivers in present-day India are somehow related to these long-gone aquatic mammals.
Dolphins in the Amazon and the Yangtze rivers, on the other hand, don't seem to have anything in common with this new species whose existence was documented with the help of the remains found in the Pisco-Ica desert in Peru.