The ancient whale Perucetus colossus probably measured around 20 metres in length and weighed between 85 and 340 tonnes – perhaps trumping the heaviest blue whale on record at 190 tonnes.
Reconstruction of Perucetus colossus, a whale that lived in coastal waters around 39 million years agoAn enormous species of ancient whale, whose fossils have been discovered in Peru, was one of the heaviest animals that ever lived.
In 2010, palaeontologists conducting fieldwork in southern Peru stumbled across a strange object protruding out of the ground. “It was so weird that the scientists were not even sure it was actually bone,” saysIt was only during its excavation that they realised the object must have been the bone of an enormous cetacean, a type of aquatic mammal that includes whales and dolphins.
The team reconstructed a model of what the complete skeleton might have looked like by comparing the bones with those of similar species that lived at the time. The researchers then determined that the fossil belonged to a new species of whale, which they named, they suggest it had a small head relative to its massive body.probably measured around 20 metres in length and weighed between 85 and 340 tonnes.
, which is thought to have lived close to the coast, shows there is another path to gigantism, says Amson. “Our understanding of cetacean evolution, and more generally how extreme gigantism can be acquired, has been changed for the good,” he says.
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