The size of the vertebrates is being seriously challenged by the bones of a 39-million-year old whale.
The Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculusIt has been long believed that the largest animal to ever live on Earth was. But the newly found Perucetus colossusCould leave it behind.
Its skeleton may have weighed up to three times more than that of a blue whale, according to measurements of its bones.
The skeletal fraction is used to calculate the body mass. P. colossusThe heaviest animals on record are the. The team that writes a bookThe expedition was led by the paleontologist Giovanni Bianucci of Pisa University in Italy.
“Cetacean peak body mass had already been reached around 30 million years before previously assumed, in a coastal context in which primary productivity was particularly high.”
Scientists have long wondered what limits vertebrates’ growth. In the ocean there is more room for growth, as buoyancy offsets the gravity-induced stress that land animals experience.
And for cetaceans – marine mammals such as whales and dolphins – there’s a The benefit of being largerIt is a preventative measure Core heat lossIn water, which is a high thermal conductivity in comparison to air.
Recent research has shown that there is an alternative feeding method for blue whales and other filter feeders. Upper size limit. The low metabolic cost of such a feeding strategy allows the whales to coast with a minimum of energy expenditure – but it’s Limitation of prey availability.
You can also read more about it here. P. colossusWe may find it difficult to grasp, as all of our studies of the maximum size were done on smaller animals.
A number of bones from Southern Peru have been used to estimate its size: 13 vertebrae (four ribs) and part of an hip bone. It belongs to a group known as the basilosaurids. The specimen was not fully grown, according to a close examination.
Bianucci’s team estimated the size of whales by comparing them to known species. P. colossusThe body mass of the blue whale was estimated to be between 85-340 tonnes. The largest blue-whale ever measured It weighed 199 tonnes.
The bones also showed a high degree of thickening and densification – features often seen in marine mammals to provide natural ballast, They can have larger lungs.
When is the time? P. colossusIn the midst of a thriving city Middle of the EoceneThe whale would have grown so big if it had eaten a lot of the right food. Researchers think that the whale lived near the bottom of shallow waters, was relatively slow and favored coastal habitats.
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Changes in the ecology and the ocean would have led to the decline of P. colossus.
This new record supports that hypothesis that basilosaurids were hyperspecialized in coastal habitats at the end of Eocene.” Researchers write“And that the next Major drop in productivity“These environments may be the reason why these whales were displaced by their relatives, (the ancestors to present whales or dolphins), who invaded more off-shore habitats.”
The research was published in Nature.
