Almost 100 miles southwest of Cairo in the western desert of Egypt, a dry wind sweeps

through a valley.

There's a dirty white truck driving across the valley floor.

It kicks up a plume of dust behind it.

A paleontologist in khaki pants and a loose button-down shirt gets out of the car.

He looks around at the landscape surrounding him.

It's an area with magnificent Saharan scenes.

The desert wind has warped the land into unusual shapes, mushroom-like mounds with smooth

sandy stems, spongy-looking sand boulders on the valley floor, sweeping dunes that jet

out of the plateau like sphinxes.

Millions of years ago, this was ocean.

And today, if you sweep away the first layers of sand in the valley, something incredible

starts to appear.

Just inches under the sand are hundreds of whale fossils.

I'm Sarah Wyman, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible,

and wondrous places.

Today we walk through the remnants of an ancient sea, and we watch as one of the major stories

of evolution unfolds in front of us.

Wadi Al-Hitan, the valley of the whales.

What makes this valley and the bones it contains so remarkable?

After this.

I can't speak a little bit about the first time I went there.

...