JAKARTA – Long and commonly known as the largest animal on earth, the blue whale now has competitors after paleontologists managed to uncover ancient animal fossils.
Earlier this month, scientists described an ancient whale fossil unearthed in Peru and named Perucetus colossus, which lived about 38-40 million years ago during the Eocene epoch, as a creature with a body like a manatee, possibly larger and heavier than a blue whale.
Researchers estimate Perucetus was about 66 feet (20 meters) long and weighed up to 340 metric tons, a mass that exceeds that of any other known animal, including today’s blue whale and the largest dinosaur.
“The main feature of this animal is certainly its extreme weight, which shows that evolution can produce organisms with characteristics that surpass our imagination,” said paleontologist Giovanni Bianucci of the University of Pisa in Italy, lead author of the research published in the journal ‘Nature‘, as quoted from Reuters August 20.
Perucetus’ minimum estimated weight is 85 tonnes, with an estimated average of 180 tonnes. The largest known blue whale weighed about 190 tonnes, although it was longer than Perucetus at 110 feet (33.5 meters).
Meanwhile, Argentinosaurus, a long-necked, four-legged herbivore that lived about 95 million years ago in Argentina, is estimated to have weighed about 76 tons, which in a study published in May was considered the largest dinosaur.
Part of Perucetus’ skeleton unearthed in the coastal desert of southern Peru – a region rich in whale fossils – with 13 vertebrae, four ribs and one hip bone. Its bones were of enormous size, extremely dense and hard. This characteristic, called pachyosteosclerosis, is absent in living cetaceans – a group that includes whales, porpoises and porpoises – but is present in sirens, another group of marine mammals including manatees and dugongs.
While the weight of the skeleton alone is estimated to be between 5 and 8 tons, at least twice that of the blue whale.
“His plump, bulging body probably resembled a siren fish more closely than any living whale. Among the siren fish, because of their enormous size and possibly similar lifestyle, he probably remembers the Steller’s sea cow, which was discovered in 1741 and exterminated by some humans years later,” Bianucci explained.
No remains of the skull or teeth were found, making interpretation of diet and lifestyle more difficult. The researchers suspect Perucetus lived like a siren – not an active predator but an animal foraging at the bottom of shallow coastal waters.
“Due to its heavy frame and, in all likelihood, its enormous body, this animal was clearly a slow swimmer. For me, at this stage of our knowledge, these are some kind of peaceful giants, somewhat similar to super-sized creatures. manatees. It must have been a very impressive animal, but perhaps not so terrifying,” said paleontologist Olivier Lambert of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels.
“Perhaps it was a herbivorous animal like sirens, but this is the only case among cetaceans. It probably ate small molluscs and crustaceans on the sandy bottom like gray whales that still exist,” Bianucci added.
The researchers say it is unlikely that Perucetus was a filter fish like today’s baleen whales, including the blue whale.
It is said that whales evolved around 50 million years ago from hoofed land mammals the size of medium-sized dogs. Perucetus still has the rest of the body.
Skeletal features indicate that Perucetus was related to Basilosaurus, another ancient whale that was similar in length but less massive. Basilosaurus, was an active predator that had a slender body, strong jaws and large teeth.
“Perucetus showed that cetaceans developed gigantism at least twice: relatively recently, with the evolution of large baleen whales, and about 40 million years ago, with radiation from the relative Basilosaurus of which Perucetus was the most remarkable representative,” says Bianucci.
Tags: international aluvian whale scientific research
2023-08-26 07:30:00
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