We all know that the blue whale is the biggest animal that has ever lived (at least, no bigger animal in the fossil record has yet been found). A few of the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs may have been longer, but could not match the blue whale’s massive bulk. Of course, they were land dwellers, and actually had to support their own weight, so this is really an “apples and oranges” type of comparison…
My question is – what sea creature (that isn’t another whale) came the closest to the blue whale in length and/or bulk? I’m asking for current examples and also creatures from the fossil record.
Pah. I see your mossy sore and raise you a land animal, the amphicoelias fragillimus, which may have weighed 122 tonnes and may have been 60 metres (200 feet) long. Unfortunately the fossils have been lost. Quite how someone can lose the fossils of the largest land animal ever to have lived I don’t know - probably fallen down the back of the sofa or something. ETA: I was off topic I realise. I just got excited in a Ross Geller kind of way. Sorry, OP.
Agree the Whale Shark is probably the most massive living sea creature aside from whales – one specimen reached 35.8 tonnes.
For length, I’ll nominate the Colossal Squid. Although much lighter in mass, current estimates put its maximum size at 12–14 meters (39–46 ft) long.
For extinct animals, I’d nominate the various species of Mosasuars. The largest yet found, Hainosaurus, measured 17.5 meters (57 ft).
A different extinct animal group, the Pliosaurs, was typically substantially shorter in length, but a couple of new specimens have been tentatively estimated at 49 and 52 feet in length. Since Pliosaurs tended to have more massive bodies than the snake-like Mosasaurs, that might make them candidates.
Apparently, it crumbled. There were two bones, one of which was a back vertebra. They were preserved in a crumbly mudstone, and the significance, in a time when new bigger dinosaurs were discovered seemingly every moth, was not realized at the time.
It was mentioned in the recovered field notes of the collecting team, IIRC. Cope seems not to have received the specimen (probably crumbled during transport). It was a distal femur collected near the vertebra. Mentioned in Carpenter’s 2006 paper “Biggest of the big: a critical re-evaluation of the mega-sauropod Amphicoelias fragillimus.”
That article seems to settle on 50-55 feet for size estimates. Unless I skimmed too fast, the 103-tonne figure appears to be for a hypothetical 67-foot size not mentioned in the paragraphs discussing best size estimates.
I was aware that there was a jellyfish with tentacles longer than a blue whale, but I couldn’t remember which species it was. Thanks for the link!
And I know that I said “sea creature” in the original post, but I really meant “vertebrates of substantial mass”. I didn’t specify that, though, so the Lion’s mane jellyfish deserves a mention!
OK, this doesn’t count for a variety of reasons, but I decided to post it anyway because I thought people might be interested. It’s video of a giant pyrosome,which is actually a colony of thousands of small organisms.
While looking this up on Wikipedia, I was startled to learn that these things are chordates. It’s something of an oversimplification, but, despite their looks, pyrosomes are more closely related to humans than to jellyfish (Cnidaria)!
I came in to say Whale Shark as well, one of my favorite creatures in all existence.
A shark so large is basically dwarfs all other sharks. A beautiful creature and I believe that despite its size, it does not even chow down on meat the way other sharks do. I think it just continually filters food through its mouth
