The Largest Sea Creature of All Time Found in the Desert

Bright Side

The largest sea creature of all time was recently discovered—but in the middle of a desert in Peru! Scientists found the fossilized remains of an ancient whale, believed to have lived over 30 million years ago. This massive creature, called Perucetus colossus, could have weighed up to 200 tons, rivaling or even surpassing today’s blue whales. Finding it in a desert is wild, but back in its day, that area was underwater, part of a prehistoric ocean. Its bones were so dense and heavy that researchers think it might’ve been a slow swimmer, spending most of its time floating and feeding. This discovery is rewriting what we know about ancient marine life and just how gigantic creatures could get!  Credit: Whale Vertebrae: By Nancy Hann, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60544388 Serra da Capivara: By Vitor 1234, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4176607 CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0: Perucetus colossus: By Stegotyranno, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=135491272 Skeleton of Whale: By Zacharia Nyambu, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92438511 Perucetus & Ocucajea: By SpinoDragon145, https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Perucetus_%26_Ocucajea_edited.jpg Mesturus verrucosus: By ©️ Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2456091 Camel graffiti: By John Romano D'Orazio, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70363054 CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0: Blue whale: By dannzjs/sketchfab, https://skfb.ly/oLtBL Perucetus colossus: By Major/sketchfab, https://skfb.ly/oJTsD Killer Whale: By Trouvaille/sketchfab, https://skfb.ly/6SI7C ダイナンアナゴ Sea Eel, Conger erebennus: By ffish.asia / floraZia.com/sketchfab, https://skfb.ly/o8CYw Mollweide Paleographic Map: By Scotese, Christopher R.; Vérard, Christian; Burgener, Landon; Elling, Reece P.; Kocsis, Ádám T. - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10659112, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155112447 Person: By minikin/sketchfab, https://skfb.ly/Ku97 ナマズ Amur Catfish, Silurus asotus: By ffish.asia / floraZia.com/sketchfab, https://skfb.ly/oBpq9 Groenlandaspis: By Aleksey Grishchenko/sketchfab, https://skfb.ly/oxv6K Sea krait / Sea snake: By saltoc in training/sketchfab, https://skfb.ly/o8yQG Fish Jaw: By RISD Nature Lab/sketchfab, https://skfb.ly/o67LL Serrasalmimus: By Sophie Fernandez (MNHN) - Romain Vullo, Lionel Cavin, Bouziane Khallouf, Mbarek Amaghzaz, Nathalie Bardet, Nour-Eddine Jalil, Essaid Jourani, Fatima Khaldoune und Emmanuel Gheerbran - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06792-x, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91897531 Serrasalmimus 2: By Lilian Cazes - Romain Vullo, Lionel Cavin, Bouziane Khallouf, Mbarek Amaghzaz, Nathalie Bardet, Nour-Eddine Jalil, Essaid Jourani, Fatima Khaldoune and Emmanuel Gheerbran - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06792-x, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91834440 Animation is created by Bright Side.  #brightside  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Listen to Bright Side on:  Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/idhttps-podcasts-apple-com-podcast-bright-side/id1554898078 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/brightside/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official/ Tik Tok - https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Snapchat - https://www.snapchat.com/p/c6a1e38a-bff1-4a40-9731-2c8234ccb19f/1866144599336960  Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me

Transcript

00:00Something exciting and kind of unexpected popped out among the rocks of the Ica Valley in Peru.

00:07The bones of a really old whale that lived almost 40 million years ago.

00:13At first, no one was really impressed because the bones they found were big and weirdly shaped,

00:19so people just thought they were looking at giant boulders.

00:22I mean, that's cool too, but things got way better when they realized those were the remains

00:27of a very large ancient animal that roamed along the coast of ancient Peru.

00:33Plus, it was probably the heaviest creature that ever lived.

00:37Sorry, blue whale, I know you worked hard to get to the top.

00:41The length of over 100 feet and weight of more than 200 tons

00:45brought you the status of the biggest animal on our planet.

00:49But it seems you've held the title long enough.

00:51Time to hand it over to our next candidate, and that one's really gigantic.

00:57This ocean beast was probably shorter than the blue whale, but heavier,

01:01with a weight that could be between 93 tons and 370 tons.

01:06If it's closer to the higher number,

01:08it'll make Parasitis the biggest animal ever known to have lived on Earth.

01:15And it seems its weight was the result of having extremely thick, dense bones.

01:20You can see such bones today in manatees or some other early whales.

01:26Dense bones are a great tool for such marine mammals.

01:30This feature makes them heavy and allows them to stay submerged most of the time.

01:34But at the same time, if their body was too heavy,

01:37they would end up sinking all the time,

01:39and they would waste too much energy to move back up to the surface.

01:43So, to avoid sinking, marine mammals need to have enough lighter tissues,

01:48like muscles and fat, to help them float in the water without using too much energy.

01:55Now, scientists didn't have the whole skeleton,

01:58which makes it hard to tell how big the animal was,

02:01but they used the ratio of the heavy bones to the lighter tissues in other marine mammals

02:06to estimate the overall weight of this giant, ancient whale.

02:11Experts found these fossils about 13 years ago

02:14and spent the next decade freeing the whale from the rock.

02:17Its anatomy and age showed this whale was a cousin of Bacillus aureus,

02:22a whale that had a long snout full of sharp teeth,

02:25and a sleek body similar to that of an eel.

02:30Even if Parasittus wasn't bigger than the blue whale,

02:33it was still a giant that ruled the ocean depths.

02:37Unlike modern whales, there's a possibility that this ancient fellow

02:41was a predator that liked to go after bigger prey.

02:44And this also changes how we see the history of whales.

02:48Scientists used to think these magnificent creatures became really big

02:52about 5 million years ago when they started eating lots of small creatures.

02:57But here's the proof that giant whales existed even before that.

03:01But it's still unclear how this whale managed to find enough food to sustain its enormous body.

03:09Plus, it's still hard to tell what exactly this ancient creature had on its menu.

03:13It was pretty large and not such a fast swimmer,

03:16so it's possible it searched for food in shallow waters.

03:19Then it probably ate crustaceans, clams, or some other small animals hiding in the sand.

03:26One theory says it was a scavenger,

03:28which basically means it munched on remains of everything that would come its way.

03:34It's not so unusual to find marine animals in deserts.

03:37Many of these regions used to be covered with water anyway.

03:41The Sahara in Africa is a perfect example.

03:44About 50 to 100 million years ago, this was not a dry desert,

03:48but a shallow saltwater body called the Trans-Saharan Seaway.

03:53The land is not wet there anymore, of course,

03:55but people who lived in that area knew about it because they used to find old shells across the desert.

04:03The sea was about 164 feet deep.

04:06That sounds enough for a nice swim.

04:08Some would say this area looked like modern Puerto Rico,

04:11with lots of sun and shallow water.

04:14Mangrove forests were a common thing as well as seafloors covered with mollusks,

04:18like snails and clams.

04:21The marine sediment that was left behind after the sea had dried up is full of different fossils.

04:27And the animal that lived in that ancient underwater world didn't look friendly.

04:33Plus, they were much bigger than their relatives from modern times,

04:36so a regular-sized human would end up as a snack, not even a whole meal.

04:42Normally, when animals live on small islands,

04:44they can become much bigger than their relatives from the mainland.

04:48This is something we call island gigantism,

04:51and it happens because there are more resources or fewer predators on islands.

04:57Maybe the same thing happened in the Trans-Saharan Seaway.

05:01Even though it wasn't an actual island,

05:03the water moved in and out, which created little pockets of water.

05:08And specific conditions in these pockets might have helped animals grow bigger.

05:13So we're talking about giant sea snakes, catfish, and fish that no longer exist today.

05:20One had incredibly strong jaws,

05:22and the animal used them to eat hard things and even crush shells.

05:27Their teeth showed they were fierce predators other animals had every reason to be afraid of.

05:32They went through some changes when it came to diet,

05:34similar to some types of piranhas.

05:38And the competition to get to the top of the food chain wasn't a joke.

05:42Not when there were also such large predators as sharks, crocodiles, and ancient relatives of elephants.

05:51Sahara went through different phases.

05:53If you could use a time machine and take a peek at Earth's largest hot desert as it was about 6,000 years ago,

05:59you wouldn't have to struggle with sand and heat.

06:02You'd have a nice walk through a green and pretty lush place.

06:07In the past, people who lived in that area didn't leave drawings on cave walls that showed camels, sand dunes, and scorpions.

06:16All those things you'd see in today's Sahara.

06:19Instead, they drew crocodiles.

06:22That's additional evidence that the Sahara used to have a lot of water and plants,

06:26enough to support these big yet scary animals.

06:29Around 3 billion years ago, Earth might have been mostly covered with water.

06:34Today, it's about 71% of its surface.

06:37But it seems that our planet used to be a giant ocean world with no continents at all, just some scattered islands.

06:46Scientists studied special rocks in Western Australia

06:49that formed in a place deep under the ocean called a hydrothermal vent system.

06:54To explain this better, it's important to mention two common oxygen types, O-16 and O-18.

07:01O-18 is heavier because it has extra neutrons.

07:05O-16 evaporates from water more easily.

07:07And as researchers studied an old ocean floor, they found a lot of O-18, more than in today's oceans.

07:15This way, they realized ancient Earth had less dry land than Earth today.

07:20Australia is a good spot to conduct these studies,

07:23because a long time ago, it also used to be a beautiful place with large animals and lush rainforests.

07:30But as time went by, the land became drier, and Australia had more deserts formed,

07:36such as the Great Victoria Desert.

07:38Rainforests remained only on the edges of the continent.

07:43What happens with deserts around the world?

07:46What happens with deserts across the globe is called desertification.

07:50That's when land that used to be good for growing things turns into a desert or something similar.

07:56Our planet changes over time, together with its climate.

08:00But desertification also happens because of human activities,

08:04like mining, farming, and building cities.

08:08And when land turns into a desert, it's a problem,

08:11And when land turns into a desert, it's a problem,

08:14because it can't support people and animals anymore.

08:18Food doesn't grow there.

08:19There's not enough clean water, and animals lose their homes.

08:24To help with this problem, there's a plan many countries agreed to.

08:27They decided to work with farmers to take care of the land,

08:31fix damaged areas, and manage water better.

08:34All in all, to make our planet a better place for life.

08:39That's it for today.

08:41So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity,

08:43then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

08:46Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side.

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