A Peruvian desert has turned out to be the final resting place of an ancient sperm whale with teeth much bigger than those of the largest of today's sperm whales. The fossil, dated at 12–13 million years old, belongs to a new, but extinct, genus and species described in Nature today. Named Leviathan melvillei, it probably hunted baleen whales. A team of researchers recovered 75% of the animal's skull, complete with large fragments of both jaws and several teeth. On the basis of its skull length of 3 metres, they estimate that Leviathan was probably 13.5–17.5 metres long, within the range of extant adult male sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus). According to vertebrate palaeontologist Lawrence Barnes at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, this discovery demonstrates that sperm whale-like cetaceans were much more diverse in the past and that the modern sperm whale and pygmy sperm whales are the "only surviving vestiges of a larger evolutionary radiation of related whales in the past". Call me Leviathan melvillei : Nature News Imagine running into one of these in the ocean
I saw this the other day when they announced the discovery. It's amazing to think of the size and ferocity of this sea creature. We know more about our solar system then we do the depths of the ocean, so discoveries like these always make us sit up and pay attention. That is, until our next text message.