The fossils of the Ocucaje desert
During my third trip to Peru I had the opportunity to visit the city of Ica, approximately four hours away from Lima. It is a very noisy city, as taxi drivers have the terrible habit of honking to try to get customers and almost everywhere you can hear typical mountain music at full volume. Sellers of canchita serrana (toasted corn) and corn with cheese are crowded in the streets.
The next day, I decided to travel to the town of Ocucaje, located approximately 30 kilometers from Ica, to see up close one of the most important fossil cemeteries in the world. I was accompanied by Juan Aparcana, one of the expert guides of the immense desert where you can admire the remains of whales and where vestiges of very ancient birds were found.
The little town of Ocucaje seems like an oasis lost in nowhere, where the temperature can reach 40 degrees Celsius.
In the very distant past, about 25 million years ago, the Ocucaje Desert was a tropical marine area where there were shallow, humid bays and gulfs, ideal habitat for whales and sharks such as the Carcharocles megalodon (megalodon derives from the Greek: big tooth), which, at 16 meters long, was the largest of all time. In fact, many teeth of this great animal of the past are found in the area, some of which can measure 20 centimeters!
According to the studies of several paleontologists, it seems that the king of the sharks weighed up to 20 tons and needed to eat large amounts of food. Probably, the dwarf whales, whose fossils are recurrent in the Ocucaje desert, were easy prey for this perfect machine designed to kill.
In 2001, the remains of another king of the seas were found in this area, a shark of which it was not believed that evidence could be discovered, since its cartilaginous skeleton decomposes easily. From this animal, called isurus hastalis, some 6 centimeters long teeth and several vertebrae were found. The isurus hastalis (of the Lamnidae family) was 8 meters long and weighed 2 tons. It lived about 10 million years ago, in the Miocene.
According to some paleontologists, the environmental conditions were ideal. The animal carcasses were preserved under a layer of microorganisms that made the soil anoxide (without oxygen), preventing the remains from decomposing and allowing them to fossilize.
A few years ago, Peruvian researcher Mario Urbina found the well-preserved skull of a huge bird in this vast desert.
According to the scientist, who has been living in Ocucaje for several years, the prehistoric bird of the Pelagornithidae family, whose wings spanned about 6 meters, lived in the period between 60 and 2.5 million years ago, when it became extinct due to sudden climate changes.
One of the characteristics of these enormous birds were the teeth, which grew directly from the beak and which served to grab the prey, preventing it from escaping, and which are an indication of direct kinship with reptiles.
After having driven through the desert for about an hour, we arrived at Cerro de las Brujas, a hot and inhospitable desert area.
On a hill facing the valley we found the remains of a dwarf whale that probably lived about 10 million years ago. You can clearly distinguish the vertebrae, the orbits where the eyes once were, and the front part where their whalebones were.
Possibly, these dwarf whales lived between 20 and 10 million years ago. They are considered the archaic species from which the current, much larger types of whales later originated. Shark teeth and petrified oysters are found everywhere, as if they were witnesses of the distant maritime era. It is a shame to realize that the remains of the Ocucaje whales are abandoned to their fate and that they are not valued by the population of the neighboring city of Ica. It is hoped that a museum can be built to preserve these wonderful fossils from stupid vandalism, in order to allow future generations to appreciate this unique heritage.
Furthermore, the premature death of the bird of the pelagornithidae family, due to climate change, should make us reflect. Indeed, the sudden alterations to which our planet has been subject in recent decades, caused above all by the excessive polluting emissions of our barbarism, do not endanger the Earth itself, which would be capable, in a few million years, to be completely purified, but directly threaten the existence of us humans.
YURI LEVERATTO
