A pair of anglers out fishing to feed their families have astonished academics after hooking a 5,000-year-old fossilised dolphin skull from a river 250 miles from the coast.
Damian Crispien and Pablo Silva had been fishing in the Baradero River, in San Pedro, in the Brazilian state of Parana, when they landed the perfectly preserved skull.
Experts say the skull comes from a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) from the mid-Holocene era when the area would have been at the bottom of the South Atlantic Ocean.
Images show that the 60-centimetre long and 30-centimetre wide skull appears to be in perfect condition.
The San Pedro Paleontological Museum explained in a statement obtained by Newsflash: “It is an extremely valuable record, both for the animal in question and for the place where it was found.”
Museum Director Jose Luis Aguilar added: “The first contact with the discovery of the two fishermen came to us from Nicolas Crispien, a local radio operator and cousin of Damian, requesting collaboration from the museum to identify ‘something’ that the two friends had just pulled out of the river.
“When I saw the image of the skull I couldn’t believe it.
“A dolphin skull is not removed from the bottom of the river every day.”
He added: “This discovery is the first record of dolphins for the north of the province of Buenos Aires and south of Entre Rios linked to the last entry of the sea to the continent.
“On other occasions, we have recovered remains of that ingression into our area – shells, oysters, even remains of an ancient marine beach.
“On certain occasions, fragmented remains of whales have appeared. But never the complete skull of a dolphin.”
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Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
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