It's located in the Western Desert of Egypt, 150 km south-southwest of Cairo and 90 km west of Fayoum City, contains invaluable fossil remains of the earliest, and now extinct, suborder of whales,
Archaeoceti. The totally dry Wadi El-Hitan is a distinct area within the WRPA, and lies c.40 km west of the lakes among an attractive and distinctive desert landscape of wind-eroded pillars of rock, surrounded by sand dunes, hills, cliffs and escarpment-bounded plateaux.
Both sides in the controversy would thus be vindicated: Ambulocetus, Pakicetus, and their more fully marine descendants in the extinct whale suborder
Archaeoceti would in fact be descended from mesonychians, while the two extant whale suborders would share a common ancestor (probably more recently) with hippopotamoid artiodactyls.