[Music] well there you are the sun is scorching you're thirsty all you can think about is water and ancient bones under your feet you're wandering through the Sahara the largest hot desert on Earth right now you're crossing a stretch of sand called whale Valley and all over these 75 Square Mi of land fossils cover the ground so thickly that you can't help but step on them found one of paleontologist hasham Salam says it's an unusual picture in this place the bones are poking right out of the cliffs as if they're calling to you to come
check them out you can spot ribs scattered all over the place look at these vertebrae they're giant ooh the creature they once belonged to must have been up to 65 ft long the fossils show that the animal had a streamline body like today's whale but still had features like hind legs and feet for scientists it means a very exciting thing they might have discovered a fully intact skeleton of a prehistoric whale it was an animal that lived in this area when Egypt was underwater you see today the Valley of the whales is the world's largest
ancient whale graveyard you're likely wondering what marine animals are doing in a desert more than 100 Mil away from the nearest Coast well millions of years ago this desert was at the bottom of a massive ocean called the tees which stretch from Europe to India when sea levels dro the ocean left behind a sea bed covered with fossils and today the fossils of some of the earliest known whales rest here which gives researchers a peak into how today's massive ocean whales may have evolved the fossils here are super detailed even with some stomach contents still
intact uh-oh scientists have also found fossils of ancient sharks crocodiles and turtles helping to recreate what this Marine World looked like millions of years ago now the first whalebones were discovered in 1902 but it wasn't until the 1980s that people really started to explore the area only when access to this area became better sadly some fossils had been taken away by collectors before the site turned into a protected area most of the fossils are just under the surface slowly revealed by erosion whale Valley gives us an amazing glimpse into millions of years of ancient Coastal
Marine life but let's move further ancient whale Farm aren't the only Discovery you're going to make today for over 150 years scientists have been puzzled by a strange creature that lived millions of years ago but now thanks to some amazing fossils found in Morocco they finally figured it out look at them these creatures are called Blah Blah Blah n I'm kidding styop Forin they look like flattened armor with a long arm sticking out researchers discovered these creatures in 2014 and were shocked the fossil dated back around 478 million years they found around 450 specimens and
to their surprise some even had soft tissues preserved which is super rare before this they only knew styop Forin from their hard Parts originally scientists thought these creatures were good old echinoderms animals like sea urchins and Starfish but new discoveries prove that they had a Core Body and feeding arm similar to Modern starfish complete with a water vascular system to help them move and eat this finding ends a long debate about where styop Forin fit in the animal family tree now we know they're related to echinoderms but are more advanced because they don't have the
typical five Ray symmetry ooh come here and look at this giant fossil it was found in the Sahara and gave scientists new insights into the spinosaurus the largest carnivorous dinosaur we know about these 95 milliony old s also confirm that it was the first known swimming dinosaur the spinosaurus had flat paddle-like feet and nostrils on the top of its crocodile likee head perfect for staying underwater it was a pretty weird dinosaur with a long neck trunk tail and a 7t sail on its back so it must have spent a lot of time in the water
at over 50 ft long Spinosaurus might have been even larger than T-Rex the first SP dinosaurus remains were discovered about a 100 years ago in Egypt but only this new fossil found in Morocco helped scientists reconstruct this dinosaur for the first time researchers paid attention to the creatures shorter hind Limbs and wide claws these features point to adaptations for Life In The Water its snout and dense bones also suggest it was a swimmer while its spiked tail likely attracted mates hey goodlooking come here often and here's another astonishing find made in Tunisia the remains of
machimosaurus Rex now so far it's believed to be the biggest crocodile ever this ancient Croc was about 32 ft long and weighed around 66,000 lb it was a top predator around 130 million years ago and its skull was over 5 ft long now this discovery is a big deal because it shows that these Crocs stuck around longer than we thought before this scientists believe that they disappeared during a minor Extinction event between the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods now let's go back to the fact that the Sahara was once underwater and some of the largest sea
creatures ever lived there a study published in the bulletin of the American Museum of natural history speaks about an ancient body of water called the trans Saharan Seaway it existed between 150 million years ago covering parts of Western Africa scientists spent two decades trying to recreate this prehistoric Underwater World they found it was warm and shallow home to some pretty terrifying creatures including 5-t long catfish and 40t long sea snakes yikes the Seaway was cut off from larger oceans for long stretches which may have helped these Predators grow larger because resources were always available it's
a classic case of evolution at work leading to what scientists call gigantic ISM in isolated environments but all that water didn't just disappear with no Trace under the Sands of the Sahara scientists have discovered a massive ancient Lake which they're calling a mega Lake Mak sense this Lake formed around 250,000 years ago when the Nile River flooded the Eastern Sahara at its biggest this Lake covered over 42,000 sare mil it's about half as big as Kansas they also found evidence of a smaller Lake 93 Mi west of the Nile at a slightly lower level and
covering 18,600 Mi all of this adds to Growing evidence that once North Africa had many lakes that might have created migration routes helping early humans move across the continent now in the Sahara you can find not only fossils of bizarre animals in May 2020 some weird rocks with greenish crystals were discovered in a Sandy region in southern algeria's Sahara Desert when scientists checked them out they found out these rocks weren't from Earth they were actually pieces of a meteorite called urg ch002 this meteorite is super old like the oldest volcanic rock ever found it melted
ages ago in the Fiery Heart of an ancient protoplanet that no longer exists researchers had recently published a study in nature Communications revealing that they have analyzed lead and uranium Isotopes in urg Che 002 and found out it's more than 4.5 billion years old another cool discovery made in the Sahara is quite unexpected a few years ago scientists found what they think are the world's oldest colors and their bright pink these pigments were uncovered from rocks that are around 1.1 billion years old in the Sahara Desert the colors came from microscopic organisms as animals didn't
exist back then the discovery was made by a PhD student who crushed the ancient rocks and analyzed the pigments these pink pigments are actually ancient chlorophyll from photosynthetic organisms that lived in an ocean that's long gone researchers are now sure that this finding could help explain why larger complex creatures showed up much later in Earth's history before these colors were discovered scientists didn't know what was missing in the food food chain that delayed the evolution of larger animals now they understand that tiny cyanobacteria were at the bottom of that chain apparently this discovery is not
just about finding some old pink stuff scientists believe it's a breakthrough in understanding the history of life on Earth that's it for today so hey if you pacified your curiosity then give the video a like and share it with your friends or if you want more just click on these videos and stay on the bright side
