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(01-22-2022, 08:13 AM)LonePredator Wrote: Hello Guate, I have a question, regarding the similar weights of the Livyatan and the Megalodon, don’t you think that the Livyatan is only estimated to have weighed as much as the Megalodon because it had a skeleton made of bones while the Megalodon had a cartilageous skeleton??
And the cartilaginous skeleton could allow it to have better manoeuvrability despite their huge size? I’m just guessing that a similar sized whale with a bony skeleton might not be able to move with as much manoeuvrability.
What do you think?
About the weight, as far I know there is not an "official" estimation about the weight of Livyatan, the only figure available of 57 tonnes came from Villafaña et al. (2014) and they do not provide any evidence of what method they used to calculate it. Indredibly in that same document they state a size of 30 meters for Megalodon (bigger than the blue whale!) and a weight of over 100 tons (completelly ridiculous), and several other whales were escalated as the same size as modern blue whale even when we know that were not even close to the 15 meters long, so those estimations are definitelly not reliable at all. However, based on its size and compare it with modern sperm whales, I think that 57 tonnes is a reliable figure for a cetacean of 17 meters like Livyatan, but as we don't know if this animal was slender or bulkier, it is just an educated guess. I have saw other estimations between 50 to 60 tonnes, but all of them are from people in the web, non from a published paper.
Now, while we can have a more or less good idea of the weight of Livyatan, with Megalodon is a more speculation that other thing, I mean, we only have dentition and the analogous that was used in the past to estimate its weight was the white shark which now we know it was incorrect. So while we still use the estimation of 13 - 59 tonnes for Megalodon, that maybe different if they use other shark species for comparison. When I checked orcas and white sharks of the same length, the cetacean was always the heavier, so that can give you an idea with the Pliocene giants of the sea.
About the maneuverability, that is more related with muscles than skeleton itself, I think. However we can compare dolphins and sharks and both are very fast and strong, so personally I don't see any difference, maybe is more related with internal mechanisms and energy usage (I maybe wrong on this), but that is another history. Now, as we don't have modern analogous of the same size as the prehistoric beasts, we can use the orca and the white shark (for size and ecological place only), and like I said before I found that at the same size the orca is heavier, and while the shark is faster in short turns, orca is stronger overall.
So all depends of the situation, but if someone think that these two animals (Megalodon and Livyatan) chase each other like "Tom and Jerry", that is just a silly supposition from fans with no base, they were competitors for sure but probably both of them targeted smaller prey (well, all prey on that time was smaller than them! ) and probably they avoided each other.
) and probably they avoided each other.