Source: The New York Times
Five million years ago, a massive sea monster may have eviscerated sharks and whales using gigantic teeth like this.
Murray Orr, an amateur fossil hunter, stumbled on this not-so-pearly-white in February while exploring Beaumaris Bay, a popular site for digging up ancient remains near Melbourne. At first, he had no idea what he was yanking out from the rocks.
“For a moment it looked like an artillery shell, and I thought I might blow my arm off,” he said in an email. “But then I saw the curving pointed end and knew it was a sperm whale tooth.”
Unbeknown to Mr. Orr, the fossil was unlike anything ever found in Australia. It measured about a foot long, nearly twice the size of any living sperm whale’s tooth, and was larger than the daggers that lined a Tyrannosaurus rex’s jaws.
When he returned home, Mr. Orr, who works as a real-estate appraiser during the day, emailed a picture of the fossil to Erich Fitzgerald, a paleontologist at the nearby Museum Victoria. Dr. Fitzgerald’s response came quickly:
“Crikey!!!! I’d like to find out more about this tomorrow on the phone if at all possible!!!!”
Dr. Fitzgerald instructed him to wrap up the mud-covered fossil to prevent it from drying out. The next day Mr. Orr brought it to the museum to be examined.
“Ironically enough, we did use toothbrushes to clean this fossil tooth,” said Dr. Fitzgerald.
After brushing away the dirt and analyzing the tooth’s enamel, Dr. Fitzgerald determined that it belonged to a relative of an extinct group of marine behemoths called Livyatan melvillei. He said the newly found Beaumaris beast could have been similar in size to these 60-feet long, 88,000-pound predators.
“The modern sperm whale is a deep diving squid specialist,” said Dr. Fitzgerald. “These extinct sperm whales are probably feeding on larger prey with skeletons, we’re talking large fish, sharks, and I suspect, other whales.”
Previously, the remains of this group had been found only in Peru, Chile and California, and dated back 12 to 13 million years. Mr. Orr’s find was the first discovered outside of the Americas, and at five million years, it lived much more recently.
Rather than keep the ancient Moby Dick memento, Mr. Orr donated the tooth to the museum last month.
“I could sit it next to the TV, but what then?” he said. “Science isn’t science on a coffee table.”
Categories: Australia, Biology, Evolution, The Muslim Times