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Found: Australia’s ancient bloodthirsty whale

Murray Orr found the tooth on a Melbourne beach. Photo: ABC

Murray Orr found the tooth on a Melbourne beach. Photo: ABC

The discovery of a fossil tooth bigger than the teeth of a Tyrannosaurus rex has revealed that giant killer sperm whales once roamed Australia’s waters.

The ancient tooth, which measured about 30 centimetres long and weighed around three kilograms, is believed to come from an extinct species of sperm whale that would have measured up to 18 metres long and weighed a whopping 40 tonnes.

Local fossil enthusiast Murray Orr made the discovery in February at Beaumaris Bay, a world-renowned fossil site in Melbourne’s south-east.

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“I saw what I thought was a drink can sticking out of the sand and I went to grab that,” Mr Orr told the ABC.

“I had to shift a few rocks off top and out popped a tooth.”

murray orr museum victoria dr erich whale tooth

Murray Orr’s (L) lucky find will assist Museum Victoria’s Dr Erich Fitzgerald (R) with his research. Photo: ABC

Once he realised the significance of his find, Mr Orr contacted Museum Victoria and offered to donate the fossil to its collection.

“I knew this was an important find that needed to be shared with everyone,” he said.

The museum’s senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology, Dr Erich Fitzgerald, said it provided the first evidence that these monsters of the deep lived outside of the Americas.

“It’s a first for the entire continent of Australia and it’s a fossil of a whale that has never thought to be here before,” Dr Fitzgerald said.

“By donating his discovery to Museum Victoria, Murray has ensured that this unique fossil is available for scientific research and education both now and for generations to come.”

Beaumaris Bay is one of the most unique fossil sites in Australia – not only is it the only urban fossil site in the country, but it also contained a treasure trove of remains of both marine animals and ancient land mammals.

“Nowhere else on this continent produces the fossils being found at Beaumaris and provides such astonishing insights into the deep history of Australia’s marine megafauna,” Dr Fitzgerald said.

Big whale eats the little whale

According to Dr Fitzgerald, the fossil tooth dates back to the Pliocene epoch approximately five million years ago and belonged to a killer sperm whale closely related to the gigantic Livyatan melvillei from Peru.

Unlike the living sperm whale, which primarily feeds on squid and fish, this “predatory” sperm whale would probably have preyed upon much larger animals such as other whales.

“If we only had today’s deep-diving, squid-sucking sperm whale to go on, we could not predict that just five million years ago there were giant predatory sperm whales with immense teeth that hunted other whales,” Dr Fitzgerald said.

livyatan melvillei

An artist’s impression of Livyatan Melvillei. Photo: Balcsika / DeviantArt

“Most species of whales for the past 20 million years have been of the whale-killing kind.

“So, the fossil record reveals the living species to in fact be the exception to the rule, the oddball of the sperm whale family”

The Leviathan

The gigantic Livyatan (Hebrew for ‘Leviathan’) melvillei was discovered in a Peruvian desert in 2010 and would have lived about 12 to 13 million years.

Based on the large jaw fragments and 36-centimetre-long teeth that were recovered, researchers said the Leviathan’s skull had the capacity to support large jaw muscles that would have allowed a bite force powerful enough to crush bones.

It is thought the 18-metre-long beast hunted like raptorial killer whales, meaning that it would use its teeth to tear off flesh, and would have preyed on baleen whales roughly half its size.

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