Tonight on PBS the program NOVA is looking at the fossil remains in Egypt of the ancestors of whales. Years ago I read about whale fossils found in Egypt, and they suggested that cows might be a progenitor. Now it seems that the hippopotamus is closer to whales.

It is fascinating to consider that land mammals moved back into the water (after leaving the water millions of years before). If you pull up Google Earth and search on "Valley of the Whales, Egypt" you'll land on Wadi Hitan National Park. Some of the 360^o photos show fossil whales in situ. Walking whales may have contributed to the gods in Egypt - imagining what skeletons might be would be something humans thousands of years ago thought about. (Consider how dinosaur fossils might have contributed to the idea of dragons.) When Whales Could Walk (again, as mentioned in another thread, you might need a VPN set on a US IP address to watch this).

"All modern whales have a pelvis, and some have tiny leg bones, too." Swimming mammals wouldn't need these, but they are there due to the ancestry. It is fascinating.

After it was an ocean, the area cooled and dried and forests grew, with trees up to 150'. The animals of the region left or failed. If they survived, they learned to live in colder water.

I'll be poking around Google Earth more to see if I can find some of the sites mentioned in the program. It's difficult to save coordinates in Google Earth, but they will come up in Google maps. Go figure.