Colossal primeval whale
Researchers reconstruct what is probably the heaviest animal of all time: “It lived on the seabed”
Watch the video: Gigantic primeval whale – researchers reconstruct what is probably the heaviest animal of all time.
The 13 vertebrae, four ribs and hip bone on display in Peru’s capital Lima since Wednesday may be among the heaviest animals ever. Perucetus Colossus means “the colossal whale of Peru”. It lived in the coastal waters of Peru about 39 million years ago. “This was an animal that weighed 199 tons and was over 20 meters long. It lived on the seabed, in a coastal area. And it fed on food that it found at that depth. It was a heavy animal. Every bone in it has become very dense and it has grown very much compared to its relatives.” The partial skeleton of the once massive animal was unearthed in a desert in southern Peru – a region where many whale fossils have been found. “This was one of the strangest discoveries of my career. I got out of a car through the window and got into an argument with the driver because he wouldn’t take me to the dig site. But here are the results. I think there will be many more It will be years before this animal is completely excavated.” The Perucetus Colossus had a long, cylindrical body, with stunted fins like little arms, and a very small, pointed head in relation to the body. According to the researchers’ estimates, the original whale could weigh up to 340 tons. For comparison, an adult blue whale can weigh up to 190 tons.
Scientists have found bones of what is probably the heaviest animal in Peru. The fossils come from a colossal primeval whale that lived almost 40 million years ago and weighed up to 340 tons.
According to researchers, an extinct whale that has just been analyzed is one of the heaviest animals that have ever lived on earth. The group led by Eli Amson from the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History examined the approximately 39-million-year-old bones of the whale discovered in Peru and used them to draw conclusions about its mass. The weight of the animal is estimated at 85 to 340 tons, the team writes in the journal “Nature”. The species with the name “Perucetus colossus”, roughly translated as “the colossal whale from Peru”, is a contender for the title of the “heaviest animal of all time”, said the Natural History Museum on Wednesday.
As the researchers also report in the study, the whales developed into gigantic animals earlier than previously thought. After examining the fossil whale skeleton, they assume that the early relatives of today’s whales, dolphins and porpoises lived entirely in coastal waters and had enormous body masses as early as about 39 million years ago. “The find changes the understanding of whale evolution,” said Amson. The new study shows for the first time “that the gigantic body masses of the whales were reached 30 million years earlier than previously assumed”. Previously, the evolutionary transition to true gigantism in cetaceans such as modern baleen whales had been considered a relatively recent event, around 10 million years ago.
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“Perucetus colossus” combines a gigantic size with an extremely high bone weight, said the 34-year-old researcher. “This early whale drastically pushes the previously known upper limit of skeletal mass in mammals and aquatic vertebrates. It may also be the heaviest animal ever described.” Over the course of evolution, extra weight has helped marine animals regulate their buoyancy and stay underwater, much like the weight belt used by divers. The enormous weight of the “Perucetus colossus” can be explained with the accumulation of additional bone mass on the outside of the skeletal elements and with a higher bone density.
The fossil of the “Perucetus colossus” was discovered ten years ago in the desert on the southern coast of Peru. Each vertebra in the find weighs well over 100 kilos, and the prehistoric whale’s ribs are up to 1.4 meters long. At 5 to 8 tons, the 20 meter long skeleton of the new species is two to three times as heavy as the 25 meter long skeleton of a blue whale on display in the Hintze Hall of the Natural History Museum in London. To estimate the specimen’s weight, the recovered and prepared bones were scanned and their volume determined. The internal bone structure was assessed with core drilling. To reconstruct the body mass, the researchers used the ratio of soft tissue to skeletal mass known from living marine mammals. “With the resulting estimates of between 85 and 340 tons, the weight of the new species is in the order of magnitude of the blue whale or possibly more,” the Stuttgart museum summed up.