Fossil whale jaw reveals fierce sea predator from the past.
Did a giant whale as the one in Melville’s book Moby Dick, or the White Whale actually exist? Scientific evidence says yes, but not a the time of the sailing of the Essex, the whaler on which the story was based.
Turns out scientists at the Smithsonian Institution have identified fossil remains of a giant sea creature, one that certainly could have terrorized a whaling ship, but since this cousin of a sperm whale lived some 15 million years ago, that is unlikely.
The fossil was part of a collection gathered in the 1920s and put in storage at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Remington Kellogg, who later became the first chairman of the International Whaling Commission, and helped introduce protections for whales, was responsible for the collection of many bones and fossil relics, including the bones of what was thought to be an extinct walrus.
Staff members of the museum noticed the incorrect labeling and Nick Pyenson, the curator of fossil marine mammals and co-author of the research, thought the fossil deserved a second look.
That turned out to be problematical as well, as the fossil weighed about 300 pounds and was almost completely surrounded by rock.
Pyenson said they could see places where previous investigators had tried to remove the fossil, but it was too hard to accomplish. Using lasers, the researchers were able to scan the fossil and use 3D data to rotate the rock for examination.
At the end of the examination, it was noted the fossil appeared to have upper teeth, prompting a new look. That’s when they realized they had a whale fossil that was different from anything else in the fossil records.
Alex Boersma, lead author of the new research, said modern sperm whales only have teeth in their lower jaw, and to see a sperm whale with prominent teeth in both the upper and lower jaws suggested the creature had a different diet than today’s sperm whales, possibly other marine animals.
Boersma added that while he thought this whale was pretty fierce, attacking humans is not something they see in the wild.
Despite that, the team paid homage to Moby Dick by naming the genus Albicetus, which means “white whale.”
The findings were published in the journal PLoS One.