Before 37m years, the Fayoum desert--where the 200 sqkm Wadi Al-Hitan is located--was covered with water as part of the old Mediterranean Sea, "
Tethys Sea," which has existed about 200m years ago.
The Triassic to Late Eocene rocks are of marine origin and the overlying younger sedimentary strata have been deposited in a fluvial system, owing to the cessation of marine depositional system due to the closure of the
Tethys Sea (Afzal et al., 2009).
Indus river dolphin is originated in
Tethys Sea. It is declared endangered by the IUCN red list status.
For both the sandstone that characterizes the monuments of Upper Egypt and the limestone that characterizes those of Lower Egypt were created when the land was repeatedly inundated by an immense body of water -- the
Tethys Sea -- of which the Mediterranean Sea of today is but a small remnant.
Caption: Run dry The
Tethys Sea initially connected the Indian and Atlantic oceans but shrank as the African and Eurasian continents drifted together, as seen in this simulation.
This convergence began approximately 50 Ma and was associated with the closure of the
Tethys Sea. The modern day remnant of the
Tethys Sea is the Mediterranean Sea.
The geological history of Iran has been shaped by geological events associated with the closing of the
Tethys Sea. Sampling and analysis of central populations of Aphanius revealed at least nine deeply divergent species (Hrbek et al.
If you look up Gondwana, you will see in the Late Triassic an area between Gondwana (South America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia) and Laurasia (North America, Europe and Asia) called the
Tethys Sea. What's left of it, after Africa crashed into Eurasia around the Jurassic period, is the Eastern Mediterranean.
Originally they were inhabitant of the sea when the vast Indian subcontinent was submerged under the
Tethys sea during the Eocene geological period, but as the land level rose and the sea dried up, the dolphins headed to adapt themselves to the new habitat provided by the turbid waters of the river.
"Then the Indian plate started moving northward across the [former body of water called the]
Tethys Sea." Approximately 50 million years ago, India collided with what was then the southern edge of the Asian plate.