A whale of a name change.

Just a quick update on a post I did a little while ago regarding the giant predatory Miocene whale Leviathan melvillei. Or should I say, the giant predatory Miocene whale formerly known as Leviathan melvillei. As it turns out, the genus name Leviathan was already taken (as a junior subjective synonym for Mammut). The authors of the paper recently published a corrigendum in the journal Nature explaning this, and giving the whale a new genus name, Livyatan. So Leviathan is really Livyatan (like Brontosaurus is really Apatosaurus, and Torosaurus is probably really Triceratops). This type of nomenclature change is not that uncommon in the world of paleontology.

Whale wars!

Well maybe not "wars", but some violent enough encounters to say the least. The July issue of Nature contains the publication of a paper describing a new species of Miocene sperm whale from Peru that like Carcharocles megalodon (a gigantic shark contemporary of the whale), would have been a dominant predator feasting on other medium sized whales of the time. Named Leviathan melvillei ("Herman Mellville's giant mythological marine monster"), this whale represents one of the largest known raptorial predators, and may hold the superlative of "biggest tetrapod bite ever". Awesome.