Scientists found a 16 million-year-old giant freshwater dolphin species in the Amazon, uncovering its unexpected link to South Asian river dolphins and providing insights into the evolutionary dynamics of these creatures. Artistic reconstruction ofUniversity of Zurichof freshwater dolphin in the Peruvian Amazon region. Surprisingly, its closest living relatives can be found in the river dolphins of South Asia.
An international research team led by the University of Zurich has now revealed the largest river dolphin ever found, measuring between 3 and 3.5 meters. The new species, namedafter a mythical aquatic people believed to inhabit the Amazon basin, was found in Peruvian Amazonia and is dated to be 16 million years old.The new dolphin species belongs to the Platanistoidea, a group of dolphins that were common in the world’s oceans between 24 and 16 million years ago.
Paleontologist Aldo Benites-Palomino while processing samples during the 2018 expedition to the Napo river. Credit: Rodolfo Salas-Gismondiprey to disappear, driving the giant dolphin to extinction. This opened an ecological niche that was exploited by relatives of today’s Amazon river dolphins , which were also facing extinction in the oceans due to the rise of new cetaceans, such as modern oceanic dolphins.
The holotype – a single physical specimen on which the description and name of a new species is based – ofwas found in 2018, when the lead author of the study was still an undergraduate student. The expedition, led by Peruvian paleontologist Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, former postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Paleontology at UZH, traversed more than 300 kilometers of the Napo River.