Tình trạng lộn xộn tại sa mạc giàu hóa thạch ở Peru

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Millions of years ago, this desert in Peru was a gathering place (nơi tụ tập) for fantastical sea creatures (sinh vật biển kỳ ảo): whales that walked (cá voi biết đi), dolphins with walrus faces (cá heo có khuôn mặt hải mã), sharks with teeth as large as a human face (cá mập có răng to như mặt người), red-feathered penguins (chim cánh cụt lông đỏ), aquatic sloths.

They reproduced in the gentle waters of a shallow lagoon (đầm nước nông) buffered by hills that still wrap across the landscape today. Eventually, tectonic shifts (dịch chuyển kiến tạo) lifted the land from the sea. More than 10,000 years ago, people arrived. With them came art, religion and monumental architecture.

Researchers have pieced together these snapshots of the distant past from the bones and tombs (ngôi mộ) found scattered (rải rác) in the Pisco Basin, a thick layer of fossil-rich sediment (trầm tích giàu hóa thạch) that stretches across 200 square miles of badlands and riparian corridors between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific coast of southern Peru.

Discoveries from the region have come at a brisk pace (tốc độ chóng mặt) in recent decades, with at least 55 new species of marine vertebrates (động vật có xương sống) found so far. In August, paleontologists (nhà cổ sinh vật học) unveiled what may be the region’s most remarkable find yet: Perucetus colossus, a manatee-like whale now considered the heaviest animal known to have existed.

...In Ocucaje, Manuel Uchuya, 73, lives in a squatter community atop a ceremonial center of the pre-Columbian Paracas culture. More than a century ago, the German archaeologist Max Uhle unearthed several mummies at the site that were at least 1,000 years old and were wrapped in elaborate (cầu kỳ, phức tạp) funeral bundles, including one with a serpent (con rắn) motif and a headpiece of macaw feathers.