#perucetus colossus

[etchif]

#perucetus colossus #BIG MAN #i dis not make this original template #the original is with a pic of a basking shark

[justnoodlefishthings]

screaming and crying and throwing up knowing I will NEVER get to see living Perucetus colossus

#palaeoblr #perucetus #perucetus colossus #REMEMBER WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU

[hurglewurm]

hello basilosaurid nation i have been thinking about the perucetus colossus and his tiny little legs !

[id: three drawings of a whale-like animal. they are roughly seal-shaped in terms of body, with a round flat tail and a small protruding oval head. all three have small back legs and feet. the first, coloured purplish, has flipper-like anterior appendages. the second, coloured blue, has big hands at the end of long, wide arms. the third is greenish, and has traditional finger-less whale fins. end id]

#perucetus #perucetus colossus #basilosauridae #basilosaurid #paleoart #paleoblr #whale #prehistory #my art

[leaping-laelaps-art]

I do not usually post WIPs, but I am happy with this one. The newly described basilosaurid Perucetus colossus (i.e., Chonkocetus the Large), contender for the title of heaviest known animal.

Missing parts (i.e., most of the animal, as customary for fossil vertebrates) based on Basilosaurus spp., Dorudon atrox, modern whales (Neoceti), and sirenians.

#will include proper references in the post for the finished piece #perucetus colossus #perucetus #cetacean #mammal #vertebrate #eocene #cenozoic #paleontology #palaeoblr #paleoart #my art #wip

[dani-m-art]

Big guy!!!!

#perucetus colossus #perucetus #paleoart #palaeoart #palaeoblr #illustration

[mewtwo365]

Just learned about Perucetus colossus and had to draw a pic!

Hope you enjoy this silly drawing, and have an AWESOME day!!

#perucetus #perucetus colossus #whale #fossil #prehistoric #dinosaur #whale fossil #I love this chunky whale guy!!!

[cathchicken]

Perucetus!!!!!

Love himb

#Perucetus colossus #perucetus #paleoart #palaeoart #paleonews #paleoblr #sketch #my art #art #cathchicken

[utopicwork]

Perucetus Colossus

[Begin ID: "Grey pixel art on a black background depicting a large marine mammal with a tapered tail and almost comically small face, it also has a small flipper" End ID]

#pixel art #creatures #Perucetus colossus #paleoart

[circadiancrunch]

Did another lorge whale warmup lol I'm really taken with the idea of a huge benthic whale. I think it's because I've always been rather taken with steller's sea cows too. I hope more fossils are found, I'd love a skill to confirm what kind of diet it had :'3

#art #sketch #drawing #animal drawing #doodle #warmup #perucetus colossus #basilosaurus #basilosauridae #paleoart #speculative biology #speculative reconstruction #big whale #like huuuge whale

[dinosaurnews]

Look at this chonker.

Prehistoric whale Perucetus colossus.

Follow @heitoresco on Instagram for more excellent paleoart!

#dinosaurs #dinosaur #paleontology #prehistoric #fossils #paleo art #Perucetus colossus #Prehistoric Eocene whale #heitoresco #Instagram

[pensiveant]

RIP Ishmael you would have loved spending three chapters explaining why Perucetus Colossus is a fish

#moby dick #ishmael #herman melville #perucetus colossus #perucetus #whales #i pet thy head foul beast

[majahawt]

So this is not at all accurate, but it’s how I feel when I look at the perucetus colossus reconstruction

#perucetus colossus #art #artists on tumblr #digital art #doodle

[hurglewurm]

While blue whales are sleek, fast-swimming divers, Perucetus was a very different beast. The researchers suspect that it drifted lazily through shallow coastal waters like a mammoth manatee, propelling its sausage-like body with a paddle-shaped tail. “This is a weird and stupendous fossil, for sure,” said Nicholas Pyenson, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study. “It’s clear from this discovery that there are so many other ways of being a whale that we have not yet discovered.” The head of Perucetus would have adaptations for whichever way of life it pursued. “I would love to see the skull of this guy,” Dr. Thewissen said.

excerpts from the NYT article about the Perucetus colossus by Carl Zimmer

(illustration by Alberto Gennari, 2023)

#SO MANY OTHER WAYS OF BEING A WHALE #PROPELLING ITS SAUSAGE-LIKE BODY WITH A PADDLE-SHAPED TAIL #I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THE SKULL OF THIS GUY #basilosauridae #basilosaurid #perucetus #perucetus colossus #paleoblr

[evilasiangenius]

Perucetus colossus I love you and

I love your stupid face

no seriously look at that stupid face I love you

But I especially love your little legs

WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE!

Image by Alberto Gennari, source

[Image ID: An artist rendition of an extinct prehistoric whale, Perucetus colossus, swimming in a shallow ancient sea. This is followed by cropped, zoomed-in images of the creature's comically small head/face and right hind leg. /.End ID]

#Perucetus colossus #whales #cetaceans #extinct animals #silliness

[kumquats-are-gay]

How did I only JUST find out that a NEW WHALE just dropped and it’s likely to have been HEAVIER than a fucking BLUE WHALE. THIS IS SO RAD. LOOK AT THIS THING. FUCJING-

IT’S SO GOOFY, I LOVE IT

ALSO HOW DID I MISS THIS NEWS FOR A WHOLE-ASS MONTH ??????

#i’m frothing at the mouth #I thought nothing could top the ‘eagle shark’ but here we are #PREHISTORIC CREATURES LET’S GOOHOOOOO #P. colossus #perucetus #Perucetus colossus #babe wake up new whale just dropped #op posting

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Peruvian fossil challenges blue whales for size

3 August 2023

By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent

Scientists have identified a new candidate for the heaviest ever animal on Planet Earth.

It's an ancient, long-extinct whale that would have tipped the scales at close to 200 tonnes.

Only some of the very biggest blue whale specimens might have rivalled its heft, researchers say.

The creature's fossilised bones were dug up in the desert in southern Peru, so it has been given the name Perucetus colossus.

Dating of the sediments around the remains suggests it lived about 39 million years ago.

"The fossils were actually discovered 13 years ago, but their size and shape meant it took three years just to get them to Lima (the capital of Peru), where they've been studied ever since," said Dr Eli Amson, a co-worker on the discovery team led by palaeontologist Dr Mario Urbina.

Eighteen bones were recovered from the marine mammal - an early type of whale known as a basilosaurid.

These included 13 vertebrae, four ribs and part of a hip bone.

But even given these fragmentary elements and their age, scientists were still able to decipher a huge amount about the creature.

In particular, it's evident the bones were extremely dense, caused by a process known as osteosclerosis in which inner cavities are filled.

The bones were also oversized, in the sense they had extra growth on their exterior surfaces - something called pachyostosis.

These weren't features of disease, the team said, but rather adaptations that would have given this large whale the necessary buoyancy control when foraging in shallow waters.

Similar bone features are seen for example in modern-day manatees, or sea cows, which also inhabit coastal zones in certain parts of the world.

"Each vertebra weighs over 100kg, which is just completely mind-blowing," said co-worker Dr Rebecca Bennion from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels.

"It took several men to shift them out into the middle of the floor in the museum for me to do some 3D scanning.

The team that drilled into the centre of some of these vertebrae to work out the bone density - the bone was so dense, it broke the drill on the first attempt."

When confronted with a skeleton of a long-extinct species, scientists use models to try to reconstruct the body shape and mass of the animal.

They do this based on what they know about the biology of comparable living creatures.

It is predicted Perucetus would have been about 17-20m in length, which is not exceptional.

But its bone mass alone would have been somewhere between 5.3 and 7.6 tonnes.

And by the time you add in organs, muscle and blubber, it could have weighed - depending on the assumptions - anywhere between 85 tonnes and 320 tonnes.

Dr Amson, a curator at Germany's State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, uses a median number of 180.

The largest blue whales recorded during the era of commercial exploitation were at this scale.

"What we like to say is that Perucetus is in the same ball park as the blue whale," he told BBC News.

"But there's no reason to think that our individual was particularly big or small; it was likely just part of the general population.

So it's worth keeping in mind that when we use the median estimate, it's already at the very upper ranges of what blue whales can measure."

One of the comparators used by the research team in its investigations is a blue whale that will be very familiar to anyone who has visited the Natural History Museum in London.

Nicknamed Hope, this animal's skeleton took pride of place at the institution when it was hung from the ceiling in the main hall in 2017.

But before being installed, the skeleton was scanned and described in great detail and is now an important data resource for scientists across the world.

In life, Perucetus' skeletal mass would have been two to three times that of Hope, even though the London mammal was a good five metres longer.

Richard Sabin, the curator of marine mammals at the NHM, is thrilled by the new find and would love to bring some aspect of it to London for display.

"We took the time to digitise Hope - to measure not just the weight of the bones but their shape as well, and our whale has now become something of a touchstone for people," he said.

"We don't get hung up on labels - like 'which was the largest specimen?' - because we know science at some point will always come along with new data.

What's amazing about Perucetus is that it demonstrated so much mass some 30 million-plus years ago when we thought gigantism occurred in whales only 4.5 million years ago."

Perucetus colossus is reported in the journal Nature.

#Perucetus colossus #Perucetus #Peru #fossils #palaeontology #whale #basilosaurid #osteosclerosis #pachyostosis #Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences #long-extinct species #State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart #blue whale #Natural History Museum #Hope #Peruvian fossil