For some the Leviathan melvillei is a myth, for others a gigantic sea serpent, but for the Megalodon its arch-enemy.
The animal world has always been one of care, no matter if it is today or millions of years ago, we have not yet finished discovering its world. Even those anomalous who challenge order and norm begin to appear.
With a maximum size of 17.5 meters, teeth 36 centimeters long and a strict diet of baleen or toothless whales, the Leviathan melvillei is the largest known fossil sperm whale and is also Latin American. Given its large size, it has managed to dethrone the , which was known as the top marine predator in history.
They find the authentic Leviathan melvillei
Called Leviathan Melvillei in honor of Herman Melville and his novel “Moby Dick, the prehistoric whale, Livyatan known as Leviathan in honor of appears in Peru.
The fossil of a super-predatory sperm whale from 13 million years ago is now considered one of the most dangerous on the planet and of all time, not only that it lives in Peru but also at the bottom of the sea.
The fossil remains of Leviathan were discovered in excavations organized in November 2008 in the coastal desert of the Ica region (southern Peru) by a team of paleontologists from the natural history museums of Rotterdam, Paris, Pisa, Lima and Brussels.
Until then, isolated, very large teeth had been found from this type of sperm whale, especially in Chile. Now this is what is known about him:
Important things about Leviathan
- Its teeth were like a human forearm.
- The smallest juveniles of Livyatan they may have preferred proportionally smaller prey such as smaller cetaceans or even large fish.
- It fed on the same prey animals, which were medium-sized baleen whales.
- Based on the length of its skull (3 meters) and comparisons with the proportions of the sperm whale and related species, the study authors estimated a maximum size of 17.5 meters.
- It is believed that Leviathan melvillei had a spermaceti organ that would have been filled with wax and oil, which has also inferred the possibility that it would use echolocation to find its prey.
Clashes with the Megalodon?
In the 8 or 9 million years that both predators coexisted in the Peruvian sea, they had to compete for the largest prey.
As they were two large predators that surely preyed on whales, they must have had fierce encounters with each other. On one side was the megalodon, with 17 cm triangular teeth, serrated like knives for cutting meat. On the other was the Livyatan, with 36cm teeth of pure force, designed to destroy, to crush.
The current reference to understand this rivalry is the confrontations between orcas (killer whales) and white sharks, both half the size of their predecessors.
Paleontologists have found evidence of shark bites (possibly megalodon) in the remains of Livyatan. On the other hand, since the only remains of megalodon that resisted the passage of time were its teeth, it has not been possible to record the attacks that they would have suffered due to Leviathan melvillei.