Whales in the Sahara

Today, is the Guinness World Records Day – not too sure why it should be November 17th, other than the fact that it enables Guinness to promote their book in the run up to Christmas.  However, we were asked to review the 2012 edition and it is absolutely bursting with amazing facts and feats.

Guinness World Records Day

During our coffee break we again discussed what the most interesting fact/record is in the latest edition of the World Records book.  This is quite a difficult task as there are so many to chose from.  There were several votes for the plant section (pages 64 and 65), especially for the fact that in the average life time 158,000 new plant species will be discovered that is about thirty-five per week.  The were a few votes for the human endeavours and the universe sections but in the end we chose the fact about whales in the Sahara desert (page 40).  The Sahara is not the world’s largest desert, read the book to find out the record holder for this, it is in there we promise, but it is an unusual place to find the fossilised bones of ancient whales.

The highest density of Eocene whale fossils are to be found in the Wadi Al-Hitan in Egypt’s Western Desert – a fact that is of particular importance to us at the moment as we have been researching dinosaur discoveries in Egypt.  Since 1905, some 379 fossil whales from the Eocene era have been discovered.

Read our review of the Guinness Book of Records 2012 edition: Book Review.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s award-winning website: Everything Dinosaur.