Paleontologists presented yesterday, Wednesday, in Lima the fossil of a still little-studied, 12-million-year-old prehistoric dolphin found in July in southern Peru.

The three-and-a-half-metre-long fossil skeleton of this Lomacetus was found almost intact in the desert of Ocucahe, about 350 kilometres south of the Peruvian capital.

“It’s a species of frilled shark that lived about 12 million years ago,” paleontologist Mario Gamara told AFP at a news conference at the headquarters of the Institute of Geology, Mining and Metallurgy.

“We have an almost complete skeleton, which allows us to do more studies on the whole animal: how it moved, how it swam, what it ate, or how many years it lived,” the expert explained.

The Ocukkahe is a desert that is very popular with paleontologists. A little more than twenty years ago, fossils of whales, dolphins, sharks, and other species from the Miocene period – a period that began 23 million years ago and ended about 5 million years ago – were found there.