According to a latest discovery, blue whale might not be the heaviest animal ever on Earth. On Wednesday, scientists discovered an animal’s fossil in Peru that according to them looked like a creature with an anatomy similar to that of a manatee and having a built-up heavier and bigger than that of a blue whale, believed to be the most massive creature on Earth.
Scientists have called the fossil, described as that of an early whale, Perucetus colossus. It lived around 38-40 million years ago during the Eocene epoch. The scientists said that Perucetus (pronounced per-oo-SEE-tus) weighed up to 340 metric tons and was approximately around 66 feet (20 meters) long, a body that would be even bigger than present day’s today’s blue whale and the largest dinosaurs. The meaning of the creature’s name literally translates to “colossal Peruvian whale.”
Palaeontologist Giovanni Bianucci said, “The main feature of this animal is certainly the extreme weight, which suggests that evolution can generate organisms that have characteristics that go beyond our imagination.” Bianucci is a researcher in the University of Pisa in Italy and lead author of the research on the creature published in the journal Nature.
Perucetus was estimated to have a minimum mass of 85 tonnes and an average mass of 180 tonnes. The largest blue whale ever recorded was about 190 tonnes in weight but was 110 feet (33.5 metres) longer than Perucetus. According to a study published in May, the Argentinosaurus, a long-necked, four-legged herbivore that lived around 95 million years ago in Argentina, was the most gigantic dinosaur and weighed an estimated 76 tonnes. In a study, published in May, he was ranked as the most massive dinasour to have lived.
With 13 vertebrae, four ribs, and one hip bone, the incomplete skeleton of Perucetus was discovered in the coastal desert of southern Peru, a location abundant in whale fossils. The extraordinarily large bones were highly compressed and solid. In contrast to living cetaceans, which include whales, dolphins, and porpoises, which lack this trait known as pachyosteosclerosis, this trait is present in sirenians, another marine mammal group including manatees and dugongs.
At least twice as heavy as a blue whale, its bone mass alone was estimated to be between 5 and 8 tonnes.
Bianucci added, “Its fat, bloated body may have been more like that of a sirenian than of any living whale. Among sirenians, due to its giant size and probable similar lifestyle, it could recall Steller’s sea cow, discovered in 1741 and exterminated by humans a few years later.”
No cranium or teeth remnants were discovered, making it more difficult to assess the animal’s diet and way of life. Perucetus may have led a life similar to that of sirenians, which were not active predators but rather animals that foraged at the bottom of shallow coastal waters.
“Because of its heavy skeleton and, most likely, its very voluminous body, this animal was certainly a slow swimmer. This appears to me, at this stage of our knowledge, as a kind of peaceful giant, a bit like a super-sized manatee. It must have been a very impressive animal, but maybe not so scary,” said paleontologist Olivier Lambert of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels.
“Perhaps it was herbivorous like the sirenians, but this would be the only case among cetaceans. Perhaps it fed on small mollusks and crustaceans in sandy bottoms like the extant gray whale. Or it could have been a scavenger on vertebrate carcasses, similar to some extant large-body sharks,” Bianucci said.
