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The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/newnemo on 2024-03-21 13:31:29.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The extinct species would have measured up to 3.5 metres long, making it the largest river dolphin ever found.
The discovery of this new species, Pebanista yacuruna, highlights the looming risks to the world’s remaining river dolphins, all of which face similar extinction threats in the next 20 to 40 years, according to the lead author of new research published in Science Advances today.
Aldo Benites-Palomino said it belonged to the Platanistoidea family of dolphins commonly found in oceans between 24m and 16m years ago.
“After two decades of work in South America, we had found several giant forms from the region, but this is the first dolphin of its kind,” he said.
The fossil, said Benites-Palomino, was remarkable both for its size and because it had no links to the river dolphins that now swim in the waters it once inhabited.
Urban development, pollution and mining were the key causes, he said, and had already driven the Yangtze river dolphin to extinction.
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