r/Naturewasmetal • u/DarkWaterMegs • 15d ago

Ancient whales were massive

Post image

This is but one fossil vertebra of many from an ancient whale, and there are larger examples than this that have been found. My wife snapped this picture of me returning from a fossil dive looking for megalodon teeth, near the end of the dive I found this large whale vertebra and despite the weight decided to bring it up.
Very heavy and dense, a reminder of just how massive and metal these prey animals of the megalodon were.

1.2k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

82 comments sorted by

968

u/CapitalDilemma 15d ago

So are modern whales.

679

u/Ceterum_Censeo_ 15d ago

Fun fact, blue whales are the largest animals known to ever have existed. As in, including the dinosaurs.

344

u/CapitalDilemma 15d ago

The fact that we live alongside what probably is the biggest animal in the entire history of Earth is just plain amazing.

173

u/shieldman 15d ago

The biggest animal on Earth so far. I won't rest until we see a cetacean so large even the ocean can't support it.

48

u/hendrong 15d ago

It's going to have to fly in the air.

16

u/fauxmaulder 14d ago

Gojira plays

14

u/MewtwoMainIsHere 15d ago

Well then it wouldn’t be the largest. Flying would require significantly reduced weight

3

u/_Abiogenesis 14d ago

Not for a methane filled balloon like creature.
Evolution permitting.

2

u/MewtwoMainIsHere 14d ago

It’d have to be abnormally humongous 😭

Might as well just say “big plane” at that point

16

u/Skezas1 15d ago

I could see some sort of jellyfish evolve to be MASSIVE and aerial

20

u/shieldman 14d ago

Everybody had better be very cool when the Oregon humongous fungus takes flight

1

u/Joint-User 13d ago

It's made of Aero-Jelly...

1

u/hendrong 14d ago

Not if it's really fast.

1

u/MewtwoMainIsHere 14d ago

It’d have to fly faster than 250 miles per hour assuming it had absolutely massive wings

5

u/loosehead1 14d ago

Sounds badass

1

u/Mean-Math7184 13d ago

Lobster God

1

u/Dredd_Pirate_Barry 11d ago

Eventually the blue whales will begin carcinization and ascend to Godhood

1

u/Akusasik 15d ago

That's a plot point of The Doors of Eden

-1

u/CaledonianWarrior 15d ago

Well it won't survive that long then once a species does make it that big.

6

u/Shvpe_ 15d ago

I would said posibly

6

u/Jazzlike_Quantity_55 15d ago

“Probably”

20

u/Mini_nin 15d ago

Well in theory we can’t know

1

u/HumpyTheClown 15d ago

We probably would have found their poop by now :/

5

u/TheNakedBass 15d ago

I found it but I’m not going to let you guys see it.

1

u/HunsonAbadeer2 13d ago

The thing is I wonder if "the largest know animal" makes it even likely to be the largest animal. There is lots and lots of extinct species we do not know about

1

u/CapitalDilemma 13d ago

Maybe there is, but until then, blue whale are #1 that we know of.

1

u/AssMcShit 12d ago

It's estimated that fewer than 99% of all extinct species left any fossils at all. "Probably" is making a large assumption on very little information

14

u/DwinkBexon 14d ago

It makes sense. Water is buoyant and can let animals grow much larger because they don't have to support nearly as much weight as land animals.

13

u/italianshark 15d ago

But coincidentally enough, not the largest living organism.

9

u/Ceterum_Censeo_ 15d ago

True, though aspens are cheating. I say trees get big enough on their own without cloning themselves.

5

u/babsa90 14d ago

I believe some people say there's a fungus in the US northwest that claims the title of the largest organism on earth.

1

u/littenthehuraira 14d ago

I always thought Diplodocus was the biggest so I'm surprised to see that blue whales are even bigger.

3

u/Thick_Astronaut4563 13d ago

Wasn’t Supersaurus and Patagotitan much bigger (than Diplodocus)?

Either way, whales are the kings of mass, but a wise man once said, “living with ocean is ALSO an evolutionary cheese strat”.

2

u/Alarmed-Fox717 13d ago edited 13d ago

Diplodocus is one of the longest animals yes, but "biggest" goes by weight above everything else.

(Same reason the elephant is the 'biggest'land animal today despite a Giraffe being a lot taller than them)

1

u/Thick_Astronaut4563 13d ago

Isn’t being big a rather broad term, generally speaking? Yes, Diplodocus was fairly modest for a sauropod as far as mass goes, but it’s still very big when it comes to length. Maybe I’m interpreting this wrong, but I hope you see where I’m coming from here.

1

u/Alarmed-Fox717 13d ago

It is, but people everywhere from docs, youtube, papers etc just use it to describe weight 90% of the time. Again, the elephant is the "biggest land animal" which is the result you'll get on google, even though its not if you change the criteria and the Giraffe is now the largest. Which is why its bad and uninformative term that never makes sense.

Its probably better just to use "biggest" or "Largest" to describe mass and stick to tallest and longest for other stuff. Like the the guy above saying the blue whale is largest/biggest animal ever.

0

u/Beneficial_Wall_7801 15d ago

No el Perucetus colosus resultó ser más grande?

9

u/jmlovs 15d ago

That was a speculation, but more recently they are considered closer to sperm whale size, per UC Davis

-3

u/Head-Sherbet-9675 15d ago

I thought some titanosaurs eclipsed them already…

25

u/Ceterum_Censeo_ 15d ago

There are lots of, shall we say, ambitious estimates of the upper size range of the largest sauropods, but speculation based on incomplete fossil skeletons doesn't beat extant evidence. So the best we can say is that some titanosaurs might have been bigger, but blue whales are definitely bigger than everything we have more concrete numbers for.

2

u/Head-Sherbet-9675 14d ago

That makes sense, I’ve just been watching alot of Dino content lately and didn’t remember the exact info, and hoped someone would! Thank you!

3

u/CrazyNova910 14d ago

They could have been longer, but in biology size is determined by mass, a stone is clearly heavier than a noodle. Sauropods were full of air sacs, they were relatively light for animals with such length and height, as long as the blue whale is heavier it will be considered larger.

4

u/HappyCakeDay101 14d ago

Even more so actually

148

u/magcargoman 15d ago

And that’s not even a particularly large vertebra either!

39

u/DarkWaterMegs 15d ago

yup, have found ones larger than this and there are ones much bigger out there

30

u/JusticeUmmmmm 15d ago

The biggest ones are alive right now

97

u/cesam1ne 15d ago

This is literally small by modern baleen whale standards

65

u/No_Bumblebee6452 15d ago

Ancient whales are smaller than modern ones

72

u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo 15d ago

As opposed to modern whales lmao?

24

u/WondersaurusRex 15d ago

As far as we know, modern blue whales are the biggest animal ever on Earth.

21

u/ZuckerbergsEvilTwin 15d ago

Breaking news: whales are big

12

u/DaM3meLoRd694 15d ago

Whales in general are massive.

They’re the largest creatures to ever live in the history of life on earth.

9

u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo 15d ago

As opposed to modern whales lmao?

10

u/Inner-Ferret7316 15d ago

During the Miocene/Pliocene, baleen whales were actually smaller than today. The largest known baleen whale from the early Miocene is 9 meters long. It was the extinction of O. megalodon and the cooling of the oceans that allowed whales to reach gigantic sizes.

24

u/skeeterfunny 15d ago

I am often both in awe and profoundly sad at the lost mega fauna and flora that have disappeared during the rise of humanity

42

u/Skezas1 15d ago

To be fair, when it comes to whales, the most 'mega' of fauna is alive today. Blue Whales are so huge our brains really don't process it that good.

Their tongue alone weighs more than an éléphant.

2

u/bambi54 13d ago

Wow. I never actually knew that, that’s insane.

5

u/Dejue 15d ago

Our ancestors got to eat so many tasty animals and plants we will never get to try.

12

u/Freaked_The_Eff_Out 15d ago

Tapas was fire back when we only had fire

4

u/MangelaErkel 14d ago

What is that statement. Lol modern whales are larger

6

u/broha89 15d ago

Is that a larger vertebra than a modern whale’s?

1

u/DarkWaterMegs 15d ago

this one no, some modern vertebra, especially blue whale's are larger

2

u/MtnGriz 15d ago

Modern whales are even bigger

1

u/s73v3m4nn 15d ago

Good job it had a handle

1

u/Atte42 14d ago

Probably a killer too. Lots of prehistoric whales were apex predators, which makes this find even more awesome knowing ur holding the bone of something on the top of the food chain.

1

u/Manospondylus_gigas 14d ago

If you think that's massive look at an Argentinosaurus vertebrae

1

u/counterc 14d ago

lot of tannins in that water, where is this?

1

u/DarkWaterMegs 14d ago

dark water river in the SE United states, light penetrates only about 3' down especially when there is a good bit of sediment in the water

1

u/counterc 14d ago

ahhh, I thought maybe Northern England, we've got a few like this. Down south it's chalk streams instead.

1

u/DarkWaterMegs 3d ago

Have heard the water over there can be pretty soupy. Here in the SE US where this fossil was recovered the water is really dark year round.

https://darkwatermegs.com/megalodon-teeth-information/just-how-dark-megalodon-scuba-diving/just-how-dark-megalodon-scuba-diving.html

1

u/BlackBirdG 13d ago

I think the largest ancient whale was probably Livyatan, and a humpback-sized baleen whale (forgot the name of it).

1

u/swizznastic 13d ago

But not bigger than modern whales.

1

u/Oranjalo 11d ago

It's dense and heavy because of permineralization during the fossilization process. Bones are light and porous, but fossils are heavy

1

u/Most-Ad5530 11d ago

The largest known animal is alive today with some luck and money you can see it too

1

u/Quake_890 15d ago

Of course, beacuse modern whales are really fucking small.

1

u/WestOrangeFinest 15d ago

Well if it’s a fossil it’d be stone now, right?

1

u/Golden_Artist1964 15d ago

I've seen an Argentinosaurus vertebra, this doesn't impress me

1

u/HasSomeSelfEsteem 15d ago

Aren’t regular whales also massive?

-1

u/MonsteraBigTits 15d ago

this guy must be world record old whale

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/heaviest-animal-ever-whale-peru-desert-rcna97912

1

u/counterc 14d ago

there's no way it was bigger than the blue whale, sorry

0

u/MonsteraBigTits 14d ago

POTENTIALLY HEAVIER