If you search for the largest animal on Earth, the internet will likely tell you it’s the Blue Whale. However, scientists may have come across a bigger contender that could challenge the ocean’s giants.
On Wednesday, scientists revealed an incredible discovery in Peru – the fossil of an early whale known as Perucetus colossus. This ancient creature is estimated to have lived about 38-40 million years ago during the Eocene epoch and might have exceeded the mass of the blue whale, which has long held the title of the heaviest animal on record.
According to researchers, the Perucetus colossus was around 66 feet (20 meters) long and weighed up to 340 metric tonnes, making it heavier than today’s blue whale and even the largest dinosaurs. Hence the name “colossal Peruvian whale.”
The findings were published in the journal Nature. Lead author and palaeontologist Giovanni Bianucci from the University of Pisa in Italy commented on the significance of this discovery, stating that the main feature of this animal is its extreme weight, which suggests that evolution can produce organisms with characteristics beyond our imagination.
Perucetus is estimated to have had a minimum mass of 85 tonnes, with an average estimate of 180 tonnes. Although the largest-known blue whale weighed approximately 190 tonnes, it was longer than Perucetus, measuring 110 feet (33.5 meters) in length. Comparatively, Argentinosaurus, a plant-eating dinosaur from Argentina around 95 million years ago, was perhaps the most massive dinosaur, but it was much smaller with an estimated weight of about 76 tonnes.
The partial skeleton of Perucetus colossus was excavated from a coastal desert in southern Peru, a region rich in whale fossils. Scientists have unearthed 13 vertebrae, four ribs, and one hip bone of the creature so far. The bones were unusually voluminous, dense, and compact, with a skeletal mass estimated to be between five and eight tonnes, at least twice that of the blue whale.
However, the researchers have not yet found the cranial or tooth remains of Perucetus colossus, leaving questions about its diet and lifestyle. Bianucci suggested that it is possible this creature was herbivorous like sirenians, but this would be a unique case among cetaceans. Other possibilities include feeding on small mollusks and crustaceans in sandy bottoms, similar to the extant gray whale, or acting as a scavenger on vertebrate carcasses, like some extant large-body sharks.
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