16-Million-Year-Old Skull of Extinct Species of Giant Dolphin Discovered in Peru

About 16 million years ago, the Peruvian Amazon rainforest was covered by a massive lake known as Pebas, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems to ever exist on Earth. Among the species that called it home was the largest freshwater dolphin ever—a creature whose existence remained in the dark until 2018, when paleontologist Aldo Benites-Palomino spotted a fossilized jaw bone during a field expedition around Peru’s Napo River.

“As soon as I recognized it, I saw the teeth sockets. I screamed, ‘This is a dolphin.’ We could not believe it,” Benites-Palomino told The Guardian. At first, he figured the dolphin must have been an ancestor to the contemporary Amazon river pink dolphins found in South America. However, further research made it clear that not only was it a completely different species that has since gone extinct, but its closest relatives live halfway across the world. Specifically, in the Ganges and Indus rivers of South Asia, some 6,200 miles away.

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