LONDON — Scientists have discovered an ancient whale whose bite ripped huge chunks of flesh out of other whales about 12 million years ago — and they’ve named it after the author of “Moby-Dick.”
The prehistoric sperm whale grew to up to 60 feet long, not unusual by today’s standards. But unlike modern sperm whales, Leviathan melvillei, named for Herman Melville, sported vicious, tusk-like teeth 14 inches long.
The ancient beast evidently preyed on other whales, researchers said in today’s issue of the journal Nature. They report finding a skull of the whale in a Peruvian desert.
The researchers named it in tribute to the 19th-century author and his classic tale of the great white whale, which includes frequent digressions on natural history that punctuate the action.
“There is a chapter about fossils,” said one of the paper’s authors, Olivier Lambert of the Natural History Museum in Paris. “Melville even mentions some of the fossils that I studied for my Ph.D. thesis.”
