Egyptian scientists discovered a diminutive 41-million-year-old whale and named it after King Tut
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Egyptian paleontologists found a new, extinct whale species, about the size of a bottlenose dolphin.
It is the smallest known whale of the extinct Basilosauridae family, says the scientists' new study.
The species is named Tutcetus rayanensis, after King Tutankhamun, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.
To scientists' delight, it's the summer of the ancient whale, and an extinct species of a miniature one has been newly discovered in Egypt, according to research published Thursday.
Dubbed Tutcetus rayanensis by researchers, the species is the smallest known member of the extinct family Basilosauridae — a group of ancient, fully aquatic whales — according to a paper on the species' discovery in Communications Biology.
The distinction between fully aquatic whales is made because not all ancient whales were fully aquatic — before the Basilosauridae, some whale ancestors walked, according to reporting from the Smithsonian.
It's named in part "Tut" for the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, or "King Tut," who died at 19, since researchers believe the specimen found had also not yet reached full maturity.
Basilosauridae are usually found in Egypt, according to the scientists' findings, and the T. rayanensis was discovered roughly 25 miles from the Wadi El-Hitan World Heritage Site, which the findings say is "one of the world's most productive fossil whale sites."
"The discovery of the new basilosaurid whale, Tutcetus rayanensis, has brought about a substantial shift in our understanding of cetacean life histories during the Eocene epoch," the lead study author Mohammed S. Antar, a paleontologist at the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center in Egypt, said over email to CNN.
Antar told CNN that the T. rayanensis might have "undergone faster developmental processes than previously believed, suggesting a diverse range of growth strategies within this group," differentiating it from other members of its family.
From the incomplete fossil, according to the study, researchers determined the T. rayanensis to be one of the oldest discovered whale fossils — but another study author doesn't think that will be true forever.
Erik R. Seiffert, a coauthor of the study and professor at the University of Southern California, told CNN there's a chance scientists would be able to discover even more ancient and fully aquatic whales.
"Our phylogenetic analysis suggests that the transition to a fully aquatic lifestyle likely occurred a few million years earlier than the age of Tutcetus, but we do not yet have any fossil evidence that conclusively documents these predicted earlier forms," Seiffert told CNN in an email.
Antar and the MUVP didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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