Leviathan Melvilli (scientific name: Livyatan melvillei) is the largest species in Leviathan, an extinct toothed whale found in South America in Miocene. Leviathan whale is named after herman melville, the author of Moby Dick and a famous American writer. At present, the sample has only one skull, and scientists speculate that Melville whale is 17 meters long and weighs 65 tons. At present, the largest tooth is 35cm, but a burnt whale tooth with a length of 40cm was found in 20 13, so this Melville whale may be more than 17 meters. However, because there are few fossil samples at present, scientists can only conclude that they and Megalodon are top predators.

In 2008, an international team of scientists from France, Peru, the Netherlands and Belgium discovered the skull, jaw and some tooth fossils of this ancient sea monster for the first time by digging in the sediments near the southern coast of Peru. After nearly two years of research, scientists restored the original appearance of Miocene giant sperm whale unearthed in 2008 and found many differences between it and modern sperm whales.

After restoration, paleontologists obtained a skull fossil with a residual part of 3.0 meters long and an integrity of 75%. The recovery of normal specimen MUSM 1676 shows that the owner of this skull is a new type of giant predatory sperm whale, and the research team named it Livyatan melvillei I.

This name is quite literary. Its generic name is taken from Leviathan in the Bible, and its name is herman melville, the author of Moby Dick. The authors of the thesis are all novel lovers and all want to pay tribute to Mei. The fossil was restored in Lima, Peru, and this discovery was published in the journal Nature on June 30th, 20 10. At the same time, Nature published a seven-minute film, which reported the situation of fossil excavation and interviewed the participating researchers. You can watch it on official website and its YouTube channel. The generic name is also a secondary foreign body with the same name as mastodon (Leviathan Koch, 184 1, see Leviathan).