Paleontologists have found a skull belonging to an undiscovered species of prehistoric dolphin. The discovery has not been made in a field, or in a river, but at a museum.

A cetacean skull has been found inSmithsonianmuseum, said its paleontologists. When it was left there about five decades ago, nobody had an idea that it belongs to modern dolphin’s prehistoric relatives. The skull is of a newundiscovered species of dolphin that lived on earth a long time ago, explained thepaleontologists.

Many a times, paleontologists come to know about things that reveal several previously unanswered questions, saidAlexandra Boersma, lead author of a study on the latest find, in a recent statement.

The prehistoric skull was discovered about six decades ago when geologist Donald Miller was working in Yakutat borough ofAlaska. The expert from the USStates Geological Survey sent the damaged prehistoric specimen tothe Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The skull remained there for a long time untilDr. Boersma and paleontologist Nicholas Pyenson noticed something strange with it.

The researchers studied it and found that is an ancient dolphin. Now, they think the skull may shed new light on whale evolution in the Oligocene time period. Another thing that the researchers found interesting about the specimen is its location: high-latitude areas like Alaska.

“The animal was likely related to platanistoids, the ocean-dwelling descendants of modern river dolphins”, said the researcher duo, Boersma and Dr. Pyenson. They believe the skull could be more than 29 million years old.

This is not the first time when researchers found an ancient fossil. Last year, a team of researchers at the Imperial College London succeeded in extracting intact blood cells from dinosaur bone fragments.

A report published in Smithsonian Mag informed, "More than 60 years ago, while mapping what would eventually become the Yakutat City and Borough of Alaska, a USGS geologist named Donald J. Miller stumbled across an ancient skull. The snout had been broken off, but the preserved portion left no question that the cranium belonged to a prehistoric dolphin."

"It's a lovely skull, which is probably the first thing I noticed about it," Boersma says. It was immediately clear to her that the dolphin was a relative of a rare species alive today. The South Asian River dolphin, which includes the Gangus and Indus river dolphins, is an endangered species that makes its home in three river systems of Southeast Asia today, but in the deep past the relatives of this rare cetacean lived at sea.

The fossil's prodigious age also made it stand out. "The archival notes with the specimen stated that it was found in Alaska, and that it was very old for a dolphin," Pyenson says, living during a time period called the Oligocene and the details of whale evolution during this span are still murky.

According to a report in CS Monitor by Joseph Dussault, "Smithsonian paleontologists have identified a cetacean skull, which had been left to the museum more than half a century ago, as belonging to an undiscovered species of prehistoric dolphin. The new species, described Tuesday in the journal PeerJ, may be a distant relative of modern South Asian river dolphins."

A little more than 60 years ago, United States Geological Survey geologist Donald Miller was mapping Alaska's Yakutat borough when he came upon a damaged prehistoric skull. He shipped the specimen to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where it would remain for the rest of the 20th century.

An unusual looking beaked whale that washed up on Alaskan shores in 2014 was identified as belonging to a new whale species. Further investigation revealed that skeletons of the previously misidentified whale already hung in Alaskan high school and another at the Smithsonian.