This weird-looking guy who looks a bit like an African spotted hyena is called the Pakistani Ancient Whale, aka bucky whale. In Pakistan in 1979, American paleontologist Philip Kingridge discovered the paleontology, hence the name. This is the oldest and most primitive cetacean known, dating back 50 million years.
Bucky Whale
African spotted hyena
They belong to the Early Cetacean family of Bucky cetaceans, also known as a branch of the protoceraceae. The Bucky cetacean family mainly includes bucky whales, narra whales, and fish-among-a-mammals. They live mainly on land in shallow seas or on the shores of large lakes, and live by preying on fish. Early Bucky whales looked like wolfhounds, with a long, conical head, four feet on the ground, a slender tail, and a hairy body.
Bucky whales are the starting point for the transition to whales as terrestrial creatures, which is inseparable from the environment in which they grow. As early as the Eocene period, Pakistan had a large seaside area with a humid climate. However, whether Bucky whales are amphibians or purely terrestrial animals is still highly controversial.
Studies of its fossils have revealed that Bucky whales have a long skull and smaller jaw hole, primitive tooth shape, and lack of periolar sinuses. However, it also has a dense and large drum and local separation of the scaly bone and cheek bone, which is speculated to be able to adapt to the subsurface hearing, and is determined to be an early whale because of the characteristics of its inner ear. They are also identified as transitional types between terrestrial mammals and modern cetaceans.
Wandering whales
In addition, there is another species: the wandering whale, also known as the walking whale or chocobo whale, which lived about 49 million to 50 million years ago (Eocene). The wandering whale is another branch of the early whales, which can walk and swim at the same time, and is a semi-aquatic mammal.
The whale is about 12 feet long, about the size of a male sea lion, and looks like a combination of otter and crocodile. Its hind limbs are more suitable for swimming , and may swing their backs like otters and whales to swim. In addition, its teeth were similar to those of today's whales.
Whale
Kuchi whale, also known as Kaqu whale, means small whale. It belongs to the remington whale family, a suborder of ancient whales, with a body length of about 1.7 meters, and is small, close to today's otters. Whales belonging to the early Eocene 46 million years ago were able to walk and swim. It was also a transitional organism for the evolution of whales from land mammals.
3 million years after the whale was lost, the Lorde whale appeared. The Lord whale is about 2.4 meters long, and although it can still walk on land, its body has evolved a streamlined shape that is more suitable for the aquatic environment, and it has a large, elastic tail that is suitable for swimming like a whale.
With the continuous research and discovery, paleontologists have sorted out a relatively complete evolutionary route of whales: Bucky whale - wandering whale - proto whale - Rhodes whale - Dragon King whale - spear-toothed whale - Ashio whale - mackerel whale - new minke whale - manatee whale - modern baleen whale and modern tooth whale.
It took only 20 million years to develop from a mammal that could walk at the water's edge with a body length of 2-4 meters to a whale of today's size and shape, which preys on stealth in the water.