![]() ![]() Lambert and colleagues think that large predators may have partially driven these trends, particularly increasing body size in prey animals (the bigger you are, the less likely you are to fall victim to predators). That both large predators were present in the same place at the same time is a testament to the availability of prey, and the middle of the Miocene was a time when whales were both diverse and prolific. ![]() The feeding choices of Livyatan – as well as the giant shark Carcharocles megalodon – may have even influenced the pattern of whale evolution. Pound-for-pound, other whales were richer in fat and other high-energy resources than smaller prey in the area for a large predatory whale, there was no better meal than another whale. More than that, as a marine mammal Livyatan would have maintained a high, constant body temperature, and therefore would have required an enormous amount of energy to fuel its body. In other words, the robust skull of Livyatan was well-suited to dealing with the physical stresses involved in catching, killing, and consuming the baleen whales which also inhabited the waters of prehistoric Peru. This whale had one of the largest bites in the history of life on earth, and even the paper's scientific description of its probable feeding habits verge on the sensational: " a short and wide rostrum allowing a more powerful bite by the anterior teeth and better resistance to lateral movements of the struggling prey, procumbent anterior teeth for grasping voluminous prey with moderately convex body surfaces … This sperm whale could firmly hold large prey with its interlocking teeth, inflict deep wounds and tear large pieces from the body of the victim." With a head almost three metres long, this 12m-year-old-physeteroid was about the size of a bull sperm whale and had wide, v-shaped jaws studded with conical teeth in both its upper and lower jaws. Livyatan mellvillei certainly would have lived up to its name *. In July, a team of paleontologists led by Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique scientist Olivier Lambert described one of the ancient beasts in Nature. This group of ancient sperm whales is only represented by three species today (the sperm whale, the dwarf sperm whale, and the pygmy sperm whale), but the sperm whales of the Miocene were quite distinct from their extant cousins. The famous "megashark" Carcharocles megalodon swam these waters and so did the prehistoric cousins of the modern sperm whale, called physeteroids. During the middle of the Miocene epoch, between about 13m and 12m years ago, the sea which once blanketed present-day Peru was home to an array of marine predators of gargantuan proportions. ![]()
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