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Vertebrate paleontological research in the Fayum Depression began in 1879, with Georg Schweinfurth’s recovery of whale and fish fossils on the island Geziret el-Qarn in Birket Qarun (Dames, 1883; Schweinfurth, 1886). In later years Schweinfurth worked north of the lake, in part within the uppermost levels of the Birket Qarun Formation that are exposed to the south of (and stratigraphically below) the site of the Qasr el-Sagha Temple, but he is not known to have collected any vertebrate fossils from those beds. Subsequent exploration by Hugh Beadnell, and later Richard Markgraf, led to the discovery of fragmentary remains of the cetacean Basilosaurus isis from near this stratigraphic horizon on the northwest side of Birket Qarun (Andrews, 1904; Stromer, 1908; see also Gingerich, 2008), but no vertebrate fossils were reported from sediments exposed on the northeast side of the lake until late in the 20th century …