The Livyatan melvilly was named after the biblical sea monster leviathan.
If you haven’t read the bible, the leviathan was a sea monster, resembling a serpent, that
was a metaphor for a powerful enemy.
Later on in history, the livyatan became a term used for great whale, as we saw in Herman
Melville’s classic book, Moby Dick.
And that’s exactly what the Livyatan was, a species of sperm whale that’s been extinct
for about 9 million years.
Hense the two names livyatan melvillei And it was nothing short of bad ass.
But if it hadn’t gone extinct, would the world we know today be much different than
it is?
Or would history have changed completely?
Today, life’s biggest questions asks, what if the Livyatan didn’t go extinct.
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The livyatan was discovered rather recently.
It was first documented back in 2008 when a skull was found at Cerro Colorado, a desert
in Arizona that was once a huge body of water.
Livyatan lived during the Tortonian stage of the Miocene epoch, which took place betweek
9.9 and 8.9 million years ago.
Unlike most modern whales, the livyatan was an apex predator that ate other whales and
large mammals.
For comparison, The sperm whales that currently exist munch on giant squid.
It also had huge teeth, some over a foot long, that would allow it to bite of large portions
of flesh.
Its likely that the livyatan didn’t even eat entire bodies of the prey it consumed.
Similar to sperm whales, the livyatan was around 44 to 57 feet in length, and weighed
up to 50 tons.
It is one of the largest carnivorous predators that has ever walked, or rather swam on planet
earth.
Experts believed that the livyatan was a fighter.
It would ram its huge head into other whales.
It is also believed that the livyatan may have come into contact with our old friend
the megalodon shark.
A giant whale actually competed with a giant shark for food.
Can you imagine how epic a fight between a giant predatory whale and a massive shark
would be?
Maybe that’s a topic for another life’s biggest questions… but back on topic.
The livyatan’s hunting style was similar to orcas, where it would isolate pray, pursue
it, and then drown it.
Unlike killer whales though, the livyatan probably hunted alone.
At the end of the Miocene era, the world began to cool, which caused much of the food livyatan
preyed on to die.
But what if somehow, livyatan managed to survive this global cooling, and lived on?
Firstly, if livyatans didn’t go extinct, we would likely see far fewer modern whales,
dolphins, and seals in the oceans.
As I previously stated, the livyatan ate large marine mammals, and it ate a lot of them.
Once the megalodon sharks went extinct, it would have had virtually no other apex predators
to compete with.
The megalodon shark and the livyatan lived in the same part of the globe, near peru,
and evidence of both have been found at Cerro Colorado.
Without megalodon, Livyatan would reign king of the ocean.
Because the livyatan needed a lot of food, it would spend the winters near the equator,
and follow migration routes to the north and south pole in the summer.
We would see thousands of carcasses belonging to mid sized marine mammals washed up on beaches
with chunks missing from the livyatan’s bite.
In terms of human history, there would be a lot more stories, legends and folk tales
about livyatan.
Yes, we have Moby Dick, but the sea monster in Herman Melville’s book was fictional.
There would be far more mentions of a giant predatory sperm whale in inca history.
Perhaps the incas would have even thought of livyatan as a god.
Tourists that visited peru, along with alpaca merch, would be greeted by stuffed livyatans,
posters and memorabilia.
Inuit peoples who hunted whales for thousands of years, and still do today, would have come
into direct contact with livyatan.
Whales are an important part of inuit culture, and entire communities would live off whale
catches.
Perhaps inuit peoples would have not even settled where they did, in northern Canada
and greenland.
When they made the choice to live there, there were no other predators, and food was easy
to come by.
This would not be so if livyatan had not gone extinct.
Inuits would have to compete with livyatan for food.
And lastly, lets not forget the Vikings, who would have also had to deal with livyatan.
Norsemen kitchen waste from Greenland has been found to be rich in whale dna.
It can also be assumed that Vikings would have come into contact with levyatan, but
we dont know much about how they would have interacted, as humans and livyatan have never
lived alongside each other.
Maybe livyatan would have stayed away from Viking boats, maybe it would have rammed them
with its head, taking chunks out of them, thinking they were whales.
We just don’t know, we can only guess.
If the latter is an option, livyatan would have made sea travel extremely difficult.
Otherwise, not much would have been different when it comes to human history.