File:Plaque in Wadi El Hitan, Egypt.jpg
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Wadi Al-Hitan is a very important fossil site that firmly establishes the fossil record of whale evolution from land mammals, one of Darwin's major assertions in The Origin of Species. The wadi hosts skeletons of families of archaic whales in their original geological and geographic setting of the shallow nutrient-rich bay of an early sea of some 30-40 million years ago, in what is now central Egypt. There is no other place in the world yielding archaic whale fossils of such quality in such abundance and concentration -- over 400 cetacean skeletons have been discovered, the most important finds coming between 1985-1995. Many of the sirenians and cetaceans are preserved as virtually complete articulated skeletons which, uniquely, preserve reduced hind limbs, making them intermediate between earlier land mammals and later modern whales. In addition to the whale fossils, numerous other fossils of plant and animal life provide a rich picture of the ecology of the Tethyan Ocean during Eocene time, enabling interpretation of how animals then lived and how they were related to each other. These fossils are the subject of continuing study and are of iconic value for the study of evolutionary transition, and make the site vitally important as a niche in Earth's natural history. |
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| Source | Wadi El Hitan, Egypt |
| Author | Tom Horton from Shanghai, China |
| Camera location |  | View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap |  |
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This image was originally posted to Flickr by Further to Fly at https://www.flickr.com/photos/12116760@N00/2368837996. It was reviewed on 20 May 2009 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-sa-2.0. |
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The reproduction or copying of this artistic work located in a public place is permitted under the copyright law of Egypt. The concept of freedom of panorama is implicitly covered by Article 171 of Egypt's Intellectual Property Law 82 of 2002, which states that the author of a work can not prevent the "reproduction or copying works of fine, applied or plastic arts", if the work is displayed in a public place or is a work of architecture. See COM:CRT/Egypt#Freedom of panorama for more information.
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| current | 03:02, 20 May 2009 | | 2,363 × 1,640 (1.58 MB) | Tm (talk | contribs) | {{Information |Description= Wadi Al-Hitan is a very important fossil site that firmly establishes the fossil record of whale evolution from land mammals, one of Darwin's major assertions in The Origin of Species. The wadi hosts skeletons of families of ar |
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