Monday, December 05, 2011

Throw another krill on the barbie


Let me introduce you to Leviathan mellvillei, he's the bigger whale eating the big whale.


He's named after Herman Melville, author of 'Moby Dick' and a favourite book of mine.


Klaas Post of the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam in the Netherlands discovered the ancient whale's fossils on the last day of a brief fossil-hunting expedition in 2008 in the Peruvian desert.


When they saw the huge teeth they knew it wasn't a baleen whale and it turned out to be a giant sperm whale.


I've been cleaning out bits and pieces from my misc. file and I can't think how I managed to miss this beauty. I love the take on the 'Jaws' poster. I'm posting it now because of another weird experiment going on. Scientists are confident that they can bring back the woolly Mammoth from frozen DNA, perhaps only five years away from success. And every week, another species is declared extinct on our planet.


Why don't they bring this baby back and dump him in the middle of a Japanese "scientific" whaling fleet? Now that would be worth the money.

6 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

I love your idea of dumping him in the scientific whaling fleet. I would pay to have that happen. And, as an inconsequential piece of trivia, those whales who eat krill have pink pooh. Really pink. Think pink panther colour.

JahTeh said...

EC, think Flamingo pink, their colour is from eating krill.

R.H. said...

That's not a whale it's Aunt Selma.

River said...

There's probably enough whale meat in that one fish to satisfy all of Japan, for at least a month.
Do they really want to bring back a woolly mammoth? What are they going to feed it on? They eat so much.....

JahTeh said...

Robbert, it can't be, it looks prettier and it's teeth aren't false.

River, they're scientists and they have the DNA and they want a new toy for Christmas. Let's hope they never discover an insect trapped in amber or we'll have a real T-Rex instead of Tony Abbot.

Davoh said...

hey, have just heard on the radio ... no TV, no 'mobile phone' here .. just walkabouts .. that there's 'krill cam' down in Antarctica. Very boring. While yes, it does have a 'mini-scopic' lens ... one has to wait a few minutes to see a krill float past.