Bite force is all the rage lately. This year alone paleontologists have published new bite force estimates for the largest rodent of all time and a prehistoric crocodylian heavyweight. And in the pages of PLOS ONE, Eric Snively, Julia Fahlke, and Robert Welsh have brought another superlative chomper to attention – the early whale Basilosaurus.

The inspiration for the study came from damaged bones. In 2012 Fahlke published a paper on a set of busted whale skulls from the 38-36 million year old strata of Egypt. Each of the four were from juveniles of a whale called