Originally published at: Newly discovered fossils of a giant whale that may have been the largest animal to ever exist | Boing Boing
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Well, a headless whale would definitely weight less than a headed one.
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It’s really interesting how early this is, too. Most of the giant whales appear after Antarctica freezes over, starting the thermohaline circulation that brings up more nutrients from the bottom and so supports much more plankton. But this is a basilosaurid from before that…there’s no skull but their reconstruction guesses at an almost comically small head. I hope someday they find more to have some idea what it ate.
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Cetacean needed.
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maybe the head is large and filled with lots of air cavities. making it less heavy in water at least. ( hey. it could happen! 
)
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Is it a Kakliosaur? The Salarians need one of those, but if the skull is missing… 
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Perucetan is very self-concious of that…thanks for bringing it up. 
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It’s ok for me to say, I’m a Homo sapiens so very much part of the ridiculous head size club.
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Band name!
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The team exhumed only a partial skeleton without a skull
The way the main-stream media report things, this will be taken as proof of a hit by the cetacean mafia
It’s very early; middle Eocene (constrained to between 39.8 and 37.84 Ma).
Antarctica, started to freeze over in the late Palaeocene around 60Ma according to records in the Transantarctic Mountains , although the intense cooling didn’t happen until closer to 34Ma at the Eocene-Oligocene transition which is when most models suggest the the Antarctic Circumpolar Current got cranking.
Also - size aside, this beastie is adorable.
I think the illustration includes vestigal limbs because modern whales have otherwise useless vestiges of hip bones (I believe) right where those rear limbs are depicted. Their existence is part of the mountain of evidence we have for evolution.
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