Egypt Opens Middle East's First Fossil Museum

In the desert valley of Wadi al-Hitan, some 150 km southwest of Cairo, Egypt has unveiled what it said is the Middle East's first museum dedicated to fossils that showcases an early form of whales, now extinct and known as the "walking whale." The sand-colored, dome-shaped Fossils and Climate Change Museum was constructed on a grant of 2 billion euros from Italy, according to Italian Ambassador Maurizio Massari. The centerpiece of the museum is a 37-million-year-old and 20-meter-long skeleton of a legged form of whale that testifies to how modern-day whales evolved from land mammals. The Valley of the Whales' museum is also home to prehistoric tools used by early humans and various whale fossils exhibited in glass boxes corroborating the evolutionary transition of the early whales from land to water creatures.