Gigantic "Sea Monster" Discovered in Peru

It’s a good thing Captain Ahab didn’t live in the time of the Leviathan. The newly discovered fossils indicate the creature was up to 17m long and, while it looked similar to and was about the same size as the whale from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, you wouldn’t want to see one in the wild. That’s because it had teeth twice the size of those of a sperm whale, plus it had them in both in its upper and lower jaws, unlike the sperm whale, which only has teeth in its lower jaw.

Even more intriguing, according to BBC News, is the company it kept.

"And it's interesting to note that at the same time in the same waters was another monster, which was a giant shark about 15m long. It's possible that they might have fought each other".

Hmm, do I smell a made-for-TV movie in the works? Mega-Whale versus Super-Shark? Get on it, Planet Green! Anyway, although the Leviathan lived in the time of Carcharocles megalodon, it probably fed mostly on baleen whales, dolphins and other fatty, protein rich animals. The creature’s fossils were discovered in Peru by the director of the Natural History Museum in Paris two years ago.

While individual teeth had been found in the past, this is the first time a complete skull was discovered, giving scientists a more complete picture of the Leviathan melvillei (named, of course, after the Moby Dick author). The size of the skull, 3m, indicates it had the largest bite of any tetrapod ever discovered.

As this video shows, the teeth are terrifyingly large, reaching up to 36cm long and 12cm in diameter. Wear on the teeth indicate that the whale actively bit and chewed its prey, unlike modern sperm whales, which suck up its prey once it’s stuck in the whale’s jaws.

Paleontologists hope to find other Leviathan fossils and fossils of Leviathan ancestors in the same Pisco-Ica desert in southern coastal Peru, which has been a treasure trove of cetacean fossils.

So, why did the Leviathan die out?

"After the Miocene it became relatively much colder. At the same time the baleen whales became bigger probably to escape from predation from these animals, just the way elephants escaped predation by becoming bigger so they were not eaten by lions anymore," [Professor Jelle Reumer] said. Baleen whales now grow to 30 meters in length. Back then, they were much smaller, around six to ten meters long.

Maybe it’s a good thing these things are extinct. With teeth so big people at first mistook them for elephant tusks, the Leviathan would definitely make whale tours a lot less fun.