Why Basilosaurus Was the Most Terrifying Whale to Ever Live

Why Basilosaurus Was the Most Terrifying Whale to Ever Live For nearly two centuries we called it the King Lizard — a sea reptile. We were wrong. Basilosaurus was a whale that hunted other whales. Basilosaurus was a sixty-foot serpent-whale that ruled the late Eocene ocean — misclassified as a reptile in 1834, caught hunting the calves of other whales, and, by a 2015 finite-element study, the owner of the largest bite force ever estimated for any mammal. No living mammal comes close: to match its bite today you have to leave the mammals entirely, to a great white shark and a saltwater crocodile. The naturalists of 1834 thought they were staring at a sea monster. They had the blood wrong — it was a mammal. They had the threat exactly right. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:40 The Whale Called King Lizard 3:56 Reptile or Whale? 5:45 Bite Marks in the Nursery 7:38 How Hard It Bit 9:13 The Strongest Bite of Any Mammal 11:30 Before the Whales ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 SOURCES Snively, Fahlke & Welsh (2015), PLOS ONE — bite force of Basilosaurus isis: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art... Voss, Antar, Zalmout & Gingerich (2019), PLOS ONE — Basilosaurus stomach contents (diet): https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art... Fahlke (2012), Palaeontologia Electronica 15.3.32A — bite marks on Dorudon atrox: https://palaeo-electronica.org/conten... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▶ More from Tethys Codex ► The Prehistoric Whale That Walked On Land:    • Why Did Earth's Largest Animal Begin on Land?   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Business inquiries: [email protected] If I have used any clips, illustrations, or reconstructions that belong to you but have neglected to credit you, please contact me so I can credit you. #TethysCodex #Basilosaurus #PrehistoricOcean #Paleontology