Meet this ancient whale from Peru, possibly the bulkiest animal ever!

As per some scientists, this may be the heaviest animal ever found on the planet. To date, all over the globe people gave this credit to the blue whale, findings by researchers have now enabled a whale called the Perucetus colossus to replace the blue whales, thanks to the fossils found in Peru.

The whale unearthed from Peru survived approximately 38-40 million years ago. This was at the time when the Eocene epoch was also there and was 20 meters long.

The weight of the whale is found to be 340 metric tonnes. The reason why scientists are considering this whale to be the heaviest of all animals is that this mass exceeds the weight of any other creature ever on the planet, even the largest of dinosaurs and the blue whale.

The heavy whale

The scientific name of the heaviest animal, i.e. this whale found in Peru means "colossal Peruvian whale".

Giovanni Bianucci, a paleontologist from the University of Pisa, Italy is the lead author of the research. He expressed that the fundamental feature of the animal is its supremely heavyweight, which points towards the fact that evolution is able to create organisms having characteristics that can go far from our imagination.

It is estimated that the minimum mass of Perucetus was actually 85 tonnes. The average estimate is 180 tonnes. To date, the heaviest blue whale weighed approximately 190 tonnes. However, it was greater than Perucetus at 33.5 meters.

If we talk about other such heavy creatures, like the herbivore  Argentinosaurus who was present on the planet some 95 million years ago in Argentina had an estimated weight of 76 tonnes and was ranked as the most massive dinosaur in a study presented in the month of May.

Coming back to Perucetus, the partial skeleton was found approximately more than ten years ago. This task was done by Mario Urbina from the Natural History Museum, University of San Marcos, Lima.

Years of digging were spent by an international team from the section of a rocky, steep slope in the Ica desert, Peru. This area was earlier underwater and is popular for the extensive marine fossils it has.

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What exactly were the findings? The bones? Vertebrates? Bone Joints?

The findings include 13 vertebrae from the backbone of the whale, a hip bone, and four ribs. The bines thus found were extremely voluminous. They were dense, compact, and heavy. The density of the bones indicates that it is possible that the whale may have been usually present in shallow, coastal waters. Coastal creatures such as dugongs and manatees called sirenians are blessed with heavy bones, which actually aid them in staying closer to the seafloor.

The findings had other bones, but tooth or cranial remains were not present. Had the researchers been successful in finding tooth remains, an analysis of the whale's lifestyle and diet would have been easier to crack.

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The Takeaway

Olivier Lambert, a paleontologist also suggests that the heavy skeleton also indicates that the creature was actually a slow swimmer. This attribute may also indicate that the animal would have been a peaceful one; a huge animal but not a scary one.

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