Scientists discover massive ancient whale

PARIS: Look out, blue whale -- there´s a new contender for your heavyweight title. A newly discovered whale that lived nearly 40 million years ago could be the heaviest animal to have ever lived, based on a partial skeleton found in Peru, scientists said on Wednesday.

The modern blue whale has long been considered the largest and heaviest animal ever, beating out all the giant dinosaurs of the distant past. But Perucetus colossus -- the colossal whale from Peru -- may have been even heavier, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

Extrapolating from some massive bones found in the Peruvian desert, an international team of researchers estimated that the animal had an average body mass of 180 tonnes. That would not take the heavyweight title by itself. The biggest blue whale ever recorded weighed 190 tonnes, according to Guinness World Records.

But the researchers estimated the ancient whale´s weight range was between 85 and 340 tonnes, meaning it could have been significantly larger. The researchers were careful not to declare the ancient whale had broken the record.

But there was also “no reason to think that this specimen was the largest of its kind,” study co-author Eli Amson told AFP. “I think there´s a good chance that some of the individuals broke the record -- but the take-home message is that we are in the ballpark of the blue whale,” said Amson, a paleontologist at the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart in Germany.

The first fossil of the ancient whale was discovered back in 2010 by Mario Urbina, a palaeontologist who has spent decades searching the desert on the southern coast of Peru.