Michael Cherney, an exhibit preparer at U-M, admires his work on the basilosaurus.

Angela Cesere | AnnArbor.com

His plan almost worked too well.

Dr. Philip Gingerich knew Egypt's Whale Valley was a paleontologist's dream since he began his research there in the early '80s.

"There was more bones there than we could ever collect," Gingerich recalled of his early impression of the fossil-rich region in Egypt's western desert.

Fast forward to 2005. Gingerich is spearheading Egypt's efforts to get the Whale Valley declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and also trying to send a 50-foot basilosaurus fossil from that site to the University of Michigan for further research. The Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency granted U-M use of the specimen.

Finally, the paperwork cleared: The U.N. would recognize Whale Valley as a World Heritage site. Now that he'd convinced the U.N. to acknowledge the importance of Whale Valley, Gingerich would have to convince the U.N. to let him send fossils from Whale Valley overseas to Ann Arbor.

It took Gingerich, now curator and director of the U-M Museum of Paleontology, and his partners at the EEAA years to navigate the international red tape. The basilosaurus didn't get to Ann Arbor until 2008.

For the last two years, staffers at the museum have been preparing molds of the specimen - one to stay at U-M, the other returning to Whale Valley with the original fossil.

The basilosaurus.

Angela Cesere | AnnArbor.com

Today, the basilosaurus will be shipped back home to Whale Valley. The mold will be displayed in full form at the World Heritage site, Gingerich said.

The mold was prepared by Dan Erickson and Mike Cherney, exhibit preparers at the U-M Exhibit Museum of Natural History. Only the front half of the mold was assembled, just to make sure all the important parts were in the right place. The rest is vertebrae. The mold was then disassembled and boxed up for Egypt.

Of the hundreds of fossils found in Whale Valley, the basilosaurus specimen was the largest, and most complete, Gingerich said. Past researchers have found basilosaurus fossils with feet and toes.

"We'd never seen such a complete specimen before," Gingerich said. "This will help us understand more about how whales have evolved."

One mystery Gingerich hopes to solve is whether the basilosaurus moved more like a whale or a snake. (He's favoring the snake theory but can't distinguish the two enough to justify it.)

Gingerich said there are plans for a museum at the Whale Valley site, which hosts about 15,000 visitors each year. But money has been slow in coming. If funds come through, ground could break later this year.

Whale Valley is known in Egypt as Wadi Al-Hitan and is about 90 miles west of Cairo. It was recognized as a World Heritage site in 2005. As its World Heritage website explains, Whale Valley is "the most important site in the world to demonstrate one of the iconic changes that make up the record of life on Earth: the evolution of the whales."

James David Dickson can be reached at JamesDickson@AnnArbor.com.