Wadi El Hitan — Valley of the Whales

Wadi El Hitan holds hundreds of fossil skeletons of Basilosaurus and Dorudon, early whales from 40 million years ago, exposed in the sand exactly where they were found. Several preserve the vestigial hind limbs — the single clearest physical evidence of the transition from land mammal to fully aquatic whale.

The open-air museum trail runs about two kilometres with interpretive markers, and there is an excellent visitor centre. It is two and a half hours from Cairo.

Inscribed by UNESCO in 2005. The site was the shore of the ancient Tethys Sea. Fossils were first reported in 1902 but the significance was not fully understood until systematic surveys in the 1980s.