The teeth of "Leviathan Melvillei" were so large it was initially assumed they were elephant tusks.
"There were no elephants in South America before 3 million years ago, and the specimens found have an age of 12 to 15 million years, so that was impossible," said Professor Jelle Reumer, one of the team of scientists who found the fossil in the Pisco-Ica desert in coastal Peru.
They had been searching for other types of whale fossils in a remote area some 300 kilometers south of Lima. "The place where we found it was 20 kilometers from the nearest village," said Reumer, who is also director of Natural History Museum in Rotterdam.
Strong winds had shifted sand to expose a three-meter long fossilized skull, around three times the skull length of a modern day killer whale. The skull of the blue whale, the largest animal ever known to have existed, was around six meters long.
Read more about the news on http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/07/01/peru.levithan.whale/index.html?hpt=C1&fbid=bJjxFsVqttM
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