PERU – Scientists have discovered an incredible beast that roamed the oceans millions of years ago!
A giant whale eating whale fossil has been discovered in Peru by scientists. The specimen closely resemble’s today’s sperm whale, but has 14-inch teeth in its upper jaw and lower jaws. Scientists have named the creature “Leviathan Melvillei” in honor of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick.
Given its size and arsenal of teeth, Leviathan would most likely have been atop the prehistoric food chain. The prehistoric sperm whale grew to between 13 and 18 meters long, but what separated it from its present counterparts were its tusk-like teeth.
The ancient beast, it seems, feasted on other whales, researchers sin in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. They report finding a skull of the beast in a Peruvian desert.
The researchers named it in tribute to the 19th-century author and his classic tale of the great white whale, which includes frequent digressions on natural history that punctuate the action.
“There is a chapter about fossils,” one of the paper’s authors, Oliver Lambert of the Natural History Museum in Paris, said. “Melville even mentions some of the fossils that I studied for my PhD thesis.”
The ancient beasts “were the killer whales of their time, although on a much grander scale,” Anthony Friscia said, a paleontologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They were close to the biggest things around.”
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Oh. I thought they were talking about Rush L.
No, Rush is a prehistoric shark!
That is funny.
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