The giant mammal had a tiny head but enough mass to eclipse the blue whale
PALAEONTOLOGY
An ancient species of whale known as Perucetus colossus has been described as the heaviest animal to have ever lived. The news, announced in a study published in Nature, knocks the current holder of that title, the blue whale, from its top spot.
P. colossus lived during the Eocene epoch, between 33-54 million years ago, when rising temperatures saw a plethora of new animals evolve, including the first horses, bats and whales.
With an estimated length of 20m (66ft), P. colossus was approximately the same size as a blue whale. But its body mass, thought to be somewhere between 85 and 340 tonnes, had the potential to easily eclipse that of today’s blue whale. The ancient whale’s skeletal mass alone was two to three times that of the blue whale (3,500kg/7,700lbs).
P. colossus was discovered in Peru 13 years ago by palaeontologist and co-author on this study Mario Urbina from the University of San Marcos’ Natural History Museum in Lima. Since then, scientists have been estimating the whale’s size and weight based on its partial skeleton.
“We kept the project ultra-secret during all these years,” Dr Eli Amson, another of the paper’s authors and mammal fossil curator at Stuttgart State University of Natural History, Germany, told BBC Science Focus.
Given its enormous size, there is much speculation over P. colossus’s ability to move, not to mention its tiny head.
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