Livyatan, the killer sperm whale
A seventeen-metre whale with functional teeth in both jaws hunts other whales off Peru.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1 million years
- Known to
- ± 500 thousand years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Livyatan melvillei, from the Pisco Formation of Peru, is a sperm whale relative with the largest functional teeth of any known animal — up to 36 centimetres — set in both upper and lower jaws, unlike the modern sperm whale which has teeth only below and eats squid by suction. It shared its coastal upwelling ecosystem with megalodon, and the two were probably competitors for the same baleen whale prey. Its skull retains the large basin that in living sperm whales holds the spermaceti organ.