Hans Thewissen first went to Pakistan for paleontological fieldwork in 1984 while a graduate student at the University of Utrecht. Since then he has studied rocks and fossils from most parts of the country, including 60 million year old deposits near the Indian Ocean, and 10,000 year old sediments near K-2, the second highest mountain in the world.
Present research in the Thewissen lab focuses on the area between Islamabad and the Afghan border, where particularly interesting early Eocene sediments (approximately 50 million years old) can be found. There are rich fossil beds in the Eocene of Pakistan, and the animals in these faunas are fascinating because they document a time right after the collision of the Indian continent with Asia. At that time, Indo-Pakistan had been drifting in isolation in the Indian Ocean for 70 a million year period. The faunas contain some of the oldest representatives of several modern orders of mammals, such as even-toed ungulates. Fossils collected in Pakistan also help in deciphering the origins of whales. The most primitive whales, pakicetids, are found here, as well as some very primitive coastal whales, ambulocetids and remingtonocetids.
The field work in Pakistan is in collaboration with Dr. Taseer Hussain (Howard University) and the Geological Survey of Pakistan.
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Hans Thewissen uses a toothbrush to clean a fossil at a site in Ganda Kas in Pakistan's Punjab Province. |
Hans Thewissen inspects a fossil at a locality yielding pakicetid whales in Pakistan's Punjab Province |
Ambulocetidae
| Basilosaurids and
Dorudontids | Bibliography | Hearing
| India |
Locomotion | Mysticetes
| Odontocetes | Osmoregulation
| Pakicetidae |
Pakistan | Protocetidae
| Remingtonocetidae | Whale
| Whale Origins!