The Giant ‘Colossal’ Whale That Weighed 250,000 Pounds Had a Surprising Hunting Tactic

THE weight of a large ancient whale has been re-estimated by experts and is still colossal.

It’s called the Perucetus colossus and it was once thought to be the heaviest animal that ever lived.

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An earlier study claimed the gigantic creature weighed 187,000 to 750,000 pounds.

That’s double that of a large modern blue whale.

A new study recently published in the journal PeerJ challenges this idea.

The team behind the study thinks the ancient whale probably weighed between 130,000 and 250,000 pounds.

Researchers analyzed the older research and created 3D models of Perucetus colossus and blue whales.

They wanted to see how such a huge whale would have moved in the ocean.

“With their weight, this animal couldn’t stay on the surface,” said lead author Ryosuke Motani, a paleobiologist at the University of California, Davis. Living Science.

“This animal would have been swimming vertically upwards the entire time, which is impossible.”

“There is a particular fascination with identifying extremes in the highest dimensions among the largest vertebrates, given the challenges and difficulties in measuring extant and extinct candidates for the largest animal of all time, such as whales, non-avian dinosaurs on the land and extinct marine reptiles,” the researchers wrote.

Paelontogolist Eli Amson was the leader of the first study.

He told LiveScience that he stands by the original study and that his team gave a wider range, which was a conservative estimate for the creature’s size.

Amson is also quoted as describing the old whale as a “complete oddball.”

The Perucetus colossus is said to have lived on the coast.

This is very strange for large aquatic animals, which are usually associated with deep open water.