Megalodon – Carcharodon megalodon – Fish – Dinosaurs. Giant extinct megalodon shark

Giant super predator, inhabitant depths of the sea, Megalodon - was widespread on our planet about one and a half to two million years ago. This amazing creature, being a relative of the living and widespread modern white shark, is of great interest to scientists, because many mysteries associated with this monster still remain unsolved. And it will allow you to immerse yourself in amazing world these unsurpassed predators who roamed the oceans of the Earth millions of years ago and terrified everyone sea ​​creatures.

Thousands have been written about this gigantic shark. scientific works and popular science articles. But, nevertheless, this monster never ceases to excite people’s imagination. Much of the information about him has been obtained through numerous finds of his teeth. Since the skeleton of the megalodon, like the skeleton of all sharks, consisted of cartilage rather than bone tissue, and its remains were practically not preserved. The whole skeleton was never found, only individual vertebrae. The most unique find, a spinal column, was discovered in 1929 in Belgium.

Megalodon shark teeth are considered the largest fish teeth known to date. Their length reaches 18 centimeters! In their configuration, they are very similar to the teeth of a white shark, only they are three times smaller in size.

The most big shark megalodon (video)

The remains of this giant monster were found almost everywhere, even in such a famous place as the Mariana Trench, at a depth of over ten kilometers. Its wide distribution throughout the oceans indicates that this super-predator was everywhere at the very top of the food chain.

It is noteworthy that his huge teeth were for a long time mistaken for the remains of giant dragons or sea serpents. And only in 1667, N. Stensen, a naturalist, suggested that these teeth belonged to a huge shark.

The population size of this species began to continuously decline five million years ago, and then a gradual advance began ice age in the Pliocene.

Ultimately, megalodon disappeared from the face of the Earth. And his mystery complete disappearance remains unsolved, although scientists have made two main assumptions about the causes of extinction - the appearance of stronger competitors for the megalodon, as well as the disappearance of the necessary food base for this gigantic predator. Although, perhaps the day will come when these assumptions will be refuted and other evidence of the reasons for the extinction of this species will appear.

In the meantime, video of the largest megalodon shark, will introduce you to this amazing creation of nature:

Extinct monster or contemporary?

Evidence dating back to the Renaissance mentions the discovery of large triangular fossil teeth in many European countries. Initially, these teeth were considered to be the fossilized tongues of dragons or snakes - glossopetras.
The correct explanation for the findings was proposed in 1667 by the Danish naturalist Niels Stensen: he recognized them as teeth ancient shark. The image he made of a shark's head armed with such teeth became famous. These findings, as well as an illustration of a megalodon tooth, were published by him in the book “The Head of a Fossil Shark.”

Megalodon , Carcharodon megalodon (lat. Carcharodon megalodon), from the Greek "big tooth" - a fossil shark, the fossilized remains of which are found in sediments from the Oligocene period (about 25 million years ago) to the Pleistocene period (1.5 million years ago).

Paleontological studies show that megalodon was one of the largest and strongest predatory fish in the history of vertebrates. Megalodon has been studied mainly from partially preserved skeletal remains, the study of which shows that this shark had gigantic dimensions, reaching a length of 20 meters (according to some sources - up to 30 m). Scientists classified megalodon as a member of the order Lamniformes, however biological classification Megalodon remains a controversial issue. Megalodon is believed to have been similar to a great white shark. Fossil sites indicate that megalodon was distributed throughout the world. It was a super predator at the top of the food chain. Traces on the fossilized bones of its victims indicate that it fed on large marine animals.

The scientific name Carcharodon megalodon was assigned fossil shark in 1835 by the Swiss naturalist Jean Louis Agassiz in his work Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (Research on Fossil Fishes), completed in 1843. Due to the fact that megalodon's teeth are similar to those of a great white shark, Agassiz chose the genus Carcharodon for megalodon.

The megalodon's skeleton, like other sharks, is made of cartilage rather than bone. For this reason, fossil remains are generally very poorly preserved. Cartilage is not bone; it is quickly destroyed by time.
The most common remains of megalodon are its teeth, which are morphologically similar to those of a great white shark, but are stronger and more uniformly serrated, and of course significantly larger in size. The inclined height (diagonal length) of megalodon teeth can reach 180 mm; The teeth of no other species of shark known to science reach this size.

Several partially preserved megalodon vertebrae were also found. The most famous find of this kind is the partially preserved but still connected vertebral trunk of one individual megalodon, discovered in Belgium in 1926. It consisted of 150 vertebrae, the largest of which reached 155 millimeters in diameter. The vertebrae of Megalodon that have survived to this day indicate that it had a more calcified skeleton compared to modern sharks.

Megalodon remains have been found in many parts globe including Europe, North America, South America, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Africa, Malta, the Grenadines and India. Megalodon teeth have also been found in areas distant from continents (for example, in Mariana Trench V Pacific Ocean).
The earliest remains of megalodon date back to the late Oligocene strata. Although megalodon remains are practically absent in the strata following the Tertiary deposits, they were also found in deposits dating back to the Pleistocene.

Megalodon is believed to have gone extinct during the Pleistocene, approximately 1.5 to 2 million years ago.

On the issue of assessment maximum size Megalodon continues to be debated in the scientific community; this issue is extremely controversial and difficult. The scientific community believes that megalodon was larger than the whale shark, Rhincodon typus. The first attempt at reconstructing a megalodon jaw was made by Professor Bashford Dean in 1909. Based on the size of the reconstructed jaws, an estimate of the body length of the megalodon was obtained: it was approximately 30 meters.
However, fossil remains discovered later and new advances in vertebrate biology have cast doubt on the reliability of this reconstruction. The main reason for the inaccuracy of the reconstruction is the lack of sufficient knowledge at the time of Dean about the number and arrangement of megalodon teeth. Experts estimate that an accurate version of Bashford Dean's model of megalodon jaws would be approximately 30% smaller than the original size and would correspond to a body length consistent with modern finds. Currently, several methods have been proposed for estimating the size of megalodon, based on the statistical relationship between the size of the teeth and the body length of the great white shark.

Currently, the generally accepted estimate in the scientific community is that megalodon reached 18.2 - 20.3 meters in length.
Thus, research shows that megalodon was the most big shark from known to science, and also one of the most big fish that have ever inhabited the seas of our planet.

Megalodon had very strong teeth; their total number reached 276, i.e. approximately the same as that of a great white shark. The teeth were arranged in 5 rows. According to paleontologists, the jaw span of adult megalodon individuals could reach 2 meters.
The megalodon's exceptionally strong teeth were serrated, allowing it to easily tear pieces of flesh from the body of its victims. Paleontologist B. Kent points out that these teeth are quite thick for their size and have some flexibility, although they have enormous bending strength. The roots of megalodon teeth are quite large compared to the overall height of the tooth. Such teeth are not just good cutting tools - they are also well adapted to hold strong prey, and rarely break even when cutting through bones.

To support the very large and strong teeth, megalodon's jaws also had to be extremely massive, durable and strong. Such highly developed jaws gave the megalodon’s head a peculiar “pig-like” appearance.

The bite force of the megalodon was also studied. Zoologists involved mathematicians and physicists in these calculations. As a result of research and calculations, scientists found that the bite force of the megalodon shark was more than eighteen tons! This is simply colossal power.
For example, the bite force of the megalodon shark is almost five times greater than that of tyrannosaurs, and the great white shark has a jaw clenching force of about 2 tons.

Based on the above mentioned characteristic features appearance, the American scientist Gottfried and his colleagues were able to reconstruct the complete skeleton of the megalodon. It was exhibited at the Calvert Marine Museum (Solomon Islands, Maryland, USA). The reconstructed skeleton is 11.5 meters long and corresponds to a juvenile shark. Scientists note that the relative and proportional changes in skeletal features of megalodon compared to the great white shark are developmental in nature, and should occur in great white sharks as they increase in size.

Paleontologists conducted a study of fossil remains in order to determine the methods and tactics of a megalodon attack on prey. His results suggest that attack patterns may have differed depending on the size of the prey. Fossil remains of small cetaceans indicate that they were subjected to enormous power ram, after which they were killed and eaten. One of the objects of study - the remains of a 9-meter fossil baleen whale of the Miocene period, made it possible to quantitatively analyze the attack behavior of megalodon. The predator mainly attacked hard bony areas of the prey’s body (shoulders, flippers, chest, top part spine), which great white sharks usually avoid.

Dr. Bretton Kent theorized that the megalodon was attempting to break bones and damage vital organs (such as the heart and lungs) encased in the chest cavity of its prey. The attack on these vital organs immobilized the prey, which quickly died due to severe internal injuries. These studies also show why megalodon needed stronger teeth than the great white shark.

During the Pliocene period, larger and more developed cetaceans appeared. Megalodons modified their attack strategies to cope with these more massive animals. Was found a large number of fossilized bones of flippers and tail vertebrae of large whales of the Pliocene period, which had bite marks left by megalodon attacks. These paleontological data indicate that megalodon first tried to immobilize large prey by tearing off or biting off its motor organs, and only then killed and fed on it.

Megalodons went extinct approximately 2 million years ago. They stayed the longest in Southern Hemisphere. They were hunters of primitive whales, especially cetotheriums (small ancient baleen whales). Its victims inhabited shallow, warm shelf seas. When the climate cooled in the Pliocene, glaciers “tied up” huge water masses and many shelf seas disappeared. The map of ocean currents has changed. The oceans have become colder. The whales were able to survive by taking refuge in cold, plankton-rich waters. For megalodons, this turned out to be a death sentence. The killer whales that appeared at the same time and ate the juvenile megalodons could also have played a role.

There is an interesting theory according to which megalodon became extinct due to the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama between the American continents. At that time, strange things were happening on earth - the direction of global warm currents was changing, the climate was changing. So this theory has a fairly serious scientific explanation. Of course, the separation of the two oceans by the Isthmus of Panama was a temporary coincidence. But the fact is clear - the megalodon disappeared, Panama appeared, with its capital Panama City.
It is curious that it was on the territory of Panama that a cluster of teeth of megalodon cubs was found, which means that the juvenile megalodon shark spent its childhood here. No place like this has been found anywhere else in the world. This does not mean that they do not exist, it is just that Panama was the first where something similar was discovered. Previously, something similar was found in South Carolina, but if in the Republic of Panama they found the teeth of mostly undergrown babies, then in South Carolina they found the teeth of adult individuals, whale skulls, as well as the remains of other creatures. There is something in common, however, between these two discoveries - in both the Republic of Panama and South Carolina, finds were made at levels above the mora level.
It can be assumed that the megalodon lived in shallow waters, or came here to breed.

This discovery was also important because previously scientists believed that the baby megalodon shark did not need protection at all - after all, megalodon is the most large predator on the planet. The hypothesis described above suggests that just such nurseries in shallow water were created by young individuals in order to be able to protect themselves. After all, there were sharks here of different ages, despite the fact that the smallest megalodon specimen (fry) was only about two meters in length. And a two-meter shark, even a megalodon, swimming far from its fellows, may well become food for larger individuals of other shark species.

But still, why is it so huge and strong shark Megalodon has disappeared from the face of the planet? There are several assumptions about this. Although the megalodon itself had practically no enemies in the ocean depths, its population was still in mortal danger.
Large killer whales appeared, whose strength lay not only in powerful teeth and a more advanced body, but also in their social behavior. These killer whales hunted in packs, leaving even such sea ​​monster, like a megalodon, chances of salvation. Killer whales often hunted juvenile megalodon and ate its offspring.
But this is not the only reason and not the only hypothesis explaining the extinction of megalodon. The theories about climate change in the seas after the division of the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean by the isthmus, and the fact that the megalodon simply had nothing to eat in the dwindling waters of the oceans, seem convincing.
According to one of these theories, megalodon became extinct simply because it had nothing to eat. It's all about the size of this predator. After all, such a huge body required constant and abundant food! And if huge whales were able to survive because they fed, like their contemporaries, on plankton, then megalodon clearly did not have enough large and nutritious food for a comfortable existence.

Which of all these theories is correct, or whether they are all true together, we will never know, since the megalodon itself cannot tell us anything, and scientists can only make assumptions, hypotheses and theories.

If megalodon had lived to this day, people could have seen it often. A huge shark inhabiting coastal waters could not go unnoticed...
Although...anything is possible.
In November 2013, sensational information appeared in many media about a video filmed by the Japanese in the Mariana Trench area, on great depth. The footage shows a huge shark, which the authors of the video present as a megalodon that has survived to this day. You can find out more about this.

To conclude the story, there is a video about megalodon filmed by the British channel Nat Geo Wild HD.

The largest carnivorous sea animal that ever existed was in prehistoric times the monster Megalodon - a direct relative of the modern great white shark.

Megalodon is believed to have died out more than two million years ago, when the climate cooled in the Pliocene and the shelf seas, with the food familiar to megalodon, were covered with glaciers. Traces of these huge ancient animals were found in the rocks of India, North Africa, Australia, Japan, Belgium and many other countries.

Most often, teeth are found from the skeleton of a prehistoric monster: the diagonal height of one tooth of this monster reached 18 cm - none of the creatures that lived in the ocean had teeth of this size.

But what’s strange is that archaeologists began to discover relatively young remains of megalodon - whose age is 10 thousand - 8 thousand years ago. Moreover, messages began to arrive from experienced crews of various sea vessels, who saw a yellowish back with a characteristic fin in huge waves. Could this mean that... megalodon is alive?

Yes, let’s say the sailors could have been mistaken, confusing the silhouette of an ancient monster with the silhouette of a whale shark. However, how can one explain the fact that the silhouette observed by the Christina team reached 35-37 meters in length? Even if you reduce this figure by half, there are no whale sharks of this size. But what kind of creature could this be?

It became a worldwide sensation that in 1954, in the bottom of the ship Rachel Cohen, which was in the Adelaide dry dock for repairs, 17 huge teeth were found stuck in the wood. The width of each incisor reached 8 cm, length up to 10 cm. It should be noted that even a great white shark has a teeth size not exceeding 6 cm.

The teeth stuck in the bottom were arranged in a semicircle - a characteristic bite of sharks, near a curved propeller, while the diameter of the semicircle reached 2 m. The captain later recalled how the ship shuddered off the island of Timor (Indonesia). Later, through analysis, it was determined that the teeth actually belonged to a megalodon. Does this mean giant monsters are out there?

Relatively not so long ago, megalodon teeth began to be found on the Baltic beaches - Otradnoye, Pionersk and Svetlogorsk. Over the course of 4 years, about 800 huge teeth that once belonged to ancient fish were discovered.

Off the coast of Tahiti, a research ship with a dredge found the teeth of a megalodon that have not yet been fossilized; their age is no more than 11 thousand years. From a geological point of view, animals whose presence has not been found for more than 400 thousand years are considered extinct.

And here it’s only 11 thousand years! Here is the goblin shark, which, by the way, was considered extinct back in the Pliocene. Its teeth were not found, its silhouettes were not found, therefore it was deservedly included in the list of prehistoric fish. And then, unexpectedly, they discovered the goblin shark itself, not even its young remains, but a rather living specimen itself. And not even one. The revived relic lived at great depths. Perhaps a megalodon is also swimming somewhere nearby?

If we make a guess where I was able to survive unfavourable conditions throughout this time, a prehistoric carnivorous monster, then with the greatest degree of probability paleontologists believe that this is the fourth pole of the planet.

Only two people sank to the bottom of the Mariana Gorge. And they saw nothing there, only deep-sea invertebrates. After which they began to study the depression using ocean sensors and sonars. They were able to record the movements of massive bodies of unknown animals at the bottom. Many scientists are inclined to believe that the surviving representatives of Carcharodon megalodon are quite capable of living at great depths.

Moreover, the bottom of the gorge is strewn with megalodon teeth. Paleontologists are confident that the ancient monster, like other prehistoric animals, could wait out the unfavorable time here, on the fourth pole of the planet, where active hydrothermal springs erupt. The Mariana Trench is a pretty good place.

It turns out that the rumors that a giant shark was observed somewhere could be true? Perhaps the monster came out of its hiding place to make sure that the world above was already suitable for existence?

And if so, then very soon, when global warming leads to warming of the waters of the world's oceans, we can again see the ruler of salty waters - the giant shark Carcharodon megalodon.

As for the Mariana Trench, some ichthyologists believe that due to the presence of active hydrothermal springs at its bottom, colonies of prehistoric marine animals can exist that have survived to this day.

There is evidence that in 1918, lobstermen from Australian city Port Stephens saw a surprisingly transparent white fish in the sea - 35? meters in length. It was clear that this fish had risen from great depths. Many researchers believe that in the Mariana Trench, in its unexplored depths, the last surviving representatives of the huge prehistoric shark of the species Carcharodon megalodon are hiding. Based on the few surviving remains, researchers were able to reconstruct what megalodon looked like.

This prehistoric fish lived in the seas 2–2.5 million years ago and was of gigantic size: about 24 meters long, weighing 100 tons, and the width of its studded 10? with centimeter-long teeth of the mouth it reached 1.8–2.0 meters.

Not so long ago, while exploring the Pacific Ocean, oceanologists managed to discover well-preserved teeth of a megalodon. One of the finds is 24,000 years old, and the other is even younger - 11,000 years old! Could this mean that not all megalodons went extinct 2 million years ago?

During one of the dives in the Mariana Trench area, the German research vehicle Haifish with people on board, being at a depth of 7 kilometers, suddenly “refused” to surface. Trying to figure out the reason for this, the crew turned on the infrared camera. What they saw at first seemed to them like a group hallucination: a huge creature, resembling a prehistoric lizard, grabbed the body of the bathyscaphe with its teeth, trying to chew it like a nut... Having come to their senses, the hydronauts activated a device called an “electric gun.” From the blow powerful discharge, the monster unclenched its terrible jaws and disappeared into the darkness of the abyss...

The dive of the American unmanned bathyscaphe platform into the depths of the Mariana Trench ended with a sensation. Equipped with powerful searchlights, highly sensitive sensors and television cameras, it was lowered into the ocean depths using a steel net woven from 20 mm thick cables. After the submersible reached the bottom, cameras and microphones did not record anything interesting for several hours. And then suddenly, silhouettes of mysterious huge bodies began to flash on the television monitors in the light of the spotlights. When the device was hastily raised to the surface, part of its structures were bent.

2004 - the English magazine New Scientist spoke in detail about the mysterious sounds in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, which were detected by underwater sensors of the American SOSUS tracking system. It was created in the years cold war"to monitor Soviet submarines. Experts who studied recordings of signals from highly sensitive hydrophones identified, against the background of noise, which represented the “call signs” of various marine inhabitants, some much more powerful sound, clearly emitted by some creature living in the ocean.

This mysterious signal, first recorded in 1977, is significantly more powerful than the infrasound with which large whales communicate with each other while hundreds of kilometers away from each other.

Not everyone knows that after the disappearance of dinosaurs, the superpredator Megalodon climbed to the top of the food chain, although it seized power over other animals not on land, but in the endless waters of the World Ocean.

Description of megalodon

The name of this gigantic shark, which lived in the Paleogene - Neogene (and according to some data, extended to the Pleistocene) is translated from Greek as “big tooth”. It is believed that megalodon kept marine life at bay for quite some time, appearing about 28.1 million years ago and disappearing into oblivion about 2.6 million years ago.

Appearance

A lifetime portrait of a megalodon (a typical cartilaginous fish without bones) was reconstructed from its teeth, which were scattered in abundance throughout the ocean. In addition to teeth, researchers found vertebrae and entire spinal columns, preserved due to a high concentration of calcium (the mineral helped the vertebrae withstand the weight of the shark and the loads that arose during muscle efforts).

This is interesting! Until the Danish anatomist and geologist Niels Stensen, the teeth of the extinct shark were thought to be ordinary stones, until he identified the rocky formations as megalodon teeth. This happened in the 17th century, after which Stensen began to be called the first paleontologist.

To begin with, they reconstructed a shark jaw (with five rows of strong teeth, the total number of which reached 276), which, according to paleogeneticists, was equal to 2 meters. Then they began to work on the body of the megalodon, giving it maximum dimensions, which was typical for females, and also based on the assumption that the monster was closely related to the white shark.

The restored skeleton, 11.5 m long, resembles a skeleton, sharply increased in width/length, and frightens visitors to the Maryland Maritime Museum (USA). A broad skull, gigantic toothy jaws and a blunt short snout - as ichthyologists say, “megalodon looked like a pig.” Overall repulsive and terrifying appearance.

By the way, today scientists have already moved away from the thesis about the similarity of megalodon and carcharodon (white shark) and suggest that in appearance it rather resembled a multiply enlarged sand shark. In addition, it turned out that the behavior of megalodon (due to its enormous size and special ecological niche) was strikingly different from all modern sharks.

Megalodon dimensions

Disputes about the maximum size of the superpredator are still going on, and a number of methods have been developed to determine its true size: some suggest starting from the number of vertebrae, others draw a parallel between the size of the teeth and the length of the body. The triangular teeth of megalodon are still found in different corners planet, which indicates the wide distribution of these sharks throughout the World Ocean.

This is interesting! Carcharodon has the most similar teeth in shape, but the teeth of its extinct relative are more massive, stronger, almost three times larger and jagged more evenly. Megalodon (unlike related species) does not have a pair of lateral denticles, which gradually disappeared from its teeth.

Megalodon was armed with the largest teeth (in comparison with other living and extinct sharks) in the entire history of the Earth. Their inclined height, or diagonal length, reached 18–19 cm, and the shortest fang grew up to 10 cm, while the tooth of a white shark (the giant of the modern shark world) does not exceed 6 cm.

Comparison and study of the remains of the megalodon, consisting of fossilized vertebrae and numerous teeth, led to the idea of ​​​​its colossal size. Ichthyologists are confident that an adult megalodon reached up to 15–16 meters with a mass of about 47 tons. More impressive parameters are considered debatable.

Character and lifestyle

Giant fish, to which megalodon belonged, are rarely fast swimmers - they do not have enough endurance and the required level of metabolism for this. Their metabolism is slow, and their movement is not energetic enough: by the way, according to these indicators, megalodon is comparable not so much to a white shark, but to a whale shark. Another vulnerable spot superpredator - low strength of cartilage, which is inferior in strength to bone tissue, even taking into account their increased calcification.

Megalodon just couldn't lead active image life due to the fact that a huge mass of muscle tissue (muscle) was attached not to bones, but to cartilage. That is why the monster, looking out for prey, preferred to sit in ambush, avoiding intense pursuit: the megalodon was hampered by low speed and a meager supply of stamina. Now there are 2 known methods with which the shark killed its victims. She chose the method based on the dimensions of the gastronomic facility.

This is interesting! The first method was a crushing ram, used on small cetaceans - the megalodon attacked areas with hard bones (shoulders, upper spine, rib cage) to break them and injure the heart or lungs.

Having experienced a blow to vital organs, the victim quickly lost the ability to move and died from severe internal injuries. Megalodon invented the second method of attack much later, when the massive cetaceans that appeared in the Pliocene came into the scope of its hunting interests. Ichthyologists found many tail vertebrae and bones from flippers belonging to large Pliocene whales, with traces of megalodon bites. These findings led to the conclusion that the superpredator first immobilized large prey by biting off/tearing off its fins or flippers, and only then finished it off completely.

Lifespan

Range, habitats

Fossil remains of the megalodon revealed that its global population was numerous and occupied almost the entire World Ocean, with the exception of cold regions. According to ichthyologists, megalodon was found in temperate and subtropical waters of both hemispheres, where water temperatures fluctuated in the range of +12+27°C.

Super shark teeth and vertebrae found in different places globe, such as:

• North America;
• South America;
• Japan and India;
• Europe;
• Australia;
• New Zealand;
• Africa.

Megalodon teeth were found far from the main continents - for example, in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean. And in Venezuela, the teeth of a superpredator were found in freshwater sediments, which led to the conclusion that the megalodon was adapted to life in fresh water bodies (like a bull shark).

Megalodon diet

Until toothed whales like killer whales appeared, the monster shark, as befits a superpredator, sat at the top of the food pyramid and did not limit itself in the choice of food. The wide range of living creatures was explained by the monstrous size of the megalodon, its massive jaws and huge teeth with a small cutting edge. Thanks to its size, megalodon could cope with animals that no modern shark could defeat.

This is interesting! From the point of view of ichthyologists, megalodon with its short jaw was not able (unlike the giant mosasaurus) to tightly capture and effectively dismember large prey. He usually tore off fragments of skin and superficial muscle.

It has now been established that the basic food of the megalodon was smaller sharks and turtles, whose shells were well suited to the pressure of powerful jaw muscles and the impact of numerous teeth.

Megalodon's diet, along with sharks and sea ​​turtles, included:

• bowhead whales;
• small sperm whales;
• minke whales;
• Odobenocetops;
• cetotherium (baleen whales);
• porpoises and sirens;
• dolphins and pinnipeds.

Megalodon did not hesitate to attack objects from 2.5 to 7 m in length, for example, primitive baleen whales, which could not resist the apex predator and were not fast enough to escape from it. In 2008, a group of researchers from the United States and Australia determined the bite power of megalodon using computer modeling.

The results of the calculation were considered stunning - the megalodon squeezed the victim 9 times stronger than any current shark, and 3 times more noticeably than saltwater crocodile(holder of the current record for bite power). True, in terms of absolute bite force, megalodon was still inferior to some extinct species, such as Deinosuchus, Hoffmann's mosasaurus, Sarcosuchus, Purussaurus and Daspletosaurus.

Natural enemies

Despite its indisputable status as a superpredator, megalodon had serious enemies (they are also food competitors). Ichthyologists include among them toothed whales, more precisely, sperm whales like Zygophyseters and Melville’s leviathans, as well as some basking sharks, for example, Carcharocles chubutensis from the genus Carcharocles. Sperm whales and later killer whales were not afraid of adult super-sharks and often hunted juvenile megalodon.

Megalodon extinction

The disappearance of the species from the face of the Earth is timed to coincide with the junction of the Pliocene and Pleistocene: it is believed that the megalodon went extinct approximately 2.6 million years ago, and possibly much later - 1.6 million years ago.

Causes of extinction

Paleontologists still cannot pinpoint the exact reason that was decisive for the death of megalodon, and therefore talk about a combination of factors (other top predators and global climate change). It is known that in the Pliocene era, the bottom rose up between North and South America, and the Pacific and Atlantic oceans were divided by the Isthmus of Panama. Warm currents, having changed directions, they could no longer deliver to the Arctic required amount heat, and the northern hemisphere cooled significantly.

This is the first negative factor that affected the lifestyle of megalodons, accustomed to warm waters. In the Pliocene, small whales were replaced by large ones, which preferred cold northern climate. Populations of large whales began to migrate, swimming to cool waters in the summer, and megalodon lost its usual prey.

Important! Around the middle of the Pliocene, without year-round access to large prey, megalodons began to starve, which provoked a surge in cannibalism, which particularly affected young animals. The second reason for the extinction of the megalodon is the appearance of the ancestors of modern killer whales, toothed whales, endowed with more developed brain and leading a collective lifestyle.

Due to their large size and slow metabolism, megalodons were inferior to toothed whales in terms of high-speed swimming and maneuverability. Megalodon was also vulnerable in other ways - it was not able to protect its gills, and also periodically fell into tonic immobility (like most sharks). It is not surprising that killer whales often feasted on young megalodons (hiding in coastal waters), and when they united, they killed adult individuals. It is believed that the megalodons that lived in the Southern Hemisphere were the last to go extinct.

Is Megalodon alive?

Some cryptozoologists are confident that the monster shark could well have survived to this day. In their conclusions, they proceed from the well-known thesis: a species is classified as extinct if no signs of its presence on the planet are found for more than 400 thousand years. But how can we interpret the findings of paleontologists and ichthyologists in this case? “Fresh” teeth of megalodons found in the Baltic Sea and near Tahiti were recognized as practically “children’s” - the age of the teeth, which did not even have time to completely fossilize, is 11 thousand years.

Another relatively recent surprise, dating back to 1954, was 17 monstrous teeth stuck in the hull of the Australian ship Rachel Cohen and discovered while clearing the bottom of shells. The teeth were analyzed and the verdict was that they belonged to a megalodon.

This is interesting! Skeptics call the Rachel Cohen precedent a hoax. Their opponents never tire of repeating that the World Ocean has so far been studied only 5–10%, and it is impossible to completely exclude the existence of megalodon in its depths.

Adherents of the theory of a modern megalodon armed themselves with ironclad arguments proving the secrecy of the shark tribe. Thus, the world learned about the whale shark only in 1828, and only in 1897, the goblin shark, previously classified as an irrevocably extinct species, emerged from the depths of the World Ocean (literally and figuratively).

It was only in 1976 that humanity became acquainted with the inhabitants of the deep sea, largemouth sharks, when one of them got stuck in an anchor chain abandoned by a research vessel near the island. Oahu (Hawaii). Since then largemouth sharks seen no more than 30 times (usually as carrion on the coast). It has not yet been possible to conduct a total scan of the World Ocean, and no one has ever set such a large-scale task. But the megalodon itself, having adapted to deep water, will not approach the coast (due to its huge dimensions).

The eternal rivals of the super-sharks, sperm whales, have adapted to the considerable pressure of the water column and feel good, diving 3 kilometers and occasionally surfacing to take a breath of air. Megalodon has (or had?) an undeniable physiological advantage - it has gills that supply the body with oxygen. The megalodon has no compelling reason to make its presence known, which means there is hope that people will still hear about it.

The most varied names could be given to this powerful and terrible species of creatures - super predator, invincible horror, Scylla, Charybdis and tyrannosaurus in one bottle... Not a single living creature of the oceans could ever resist this greatest fish, the embodiment of the power and strength of evolution itself. Megalodon was truly the most terrifying shark in the multi-million-year history of the Earth, a shark next to which the great white shark, nicknamed the “white death”, looks like a pathetic herring...

Megalodon shark in the surf

Scientific disputes around the megalodon do not subside to this day - habits, habitat, the date of complete extinction of this species and its causes, the size of the mouth and body - there are no final answers to all questions about the megalodon to this day. It is very difficult to determine the parameters of the species Carcharocles megalodon, if all that remains of it and has survived to this day are giant triangular teeth 17 centimeters in length, which is five to six times larger than the teeth of the largest among the great white sharks. The mass of an adult megalodon is about 100 tons, the body length was, according to various estimates, from 16 to 30 meters - not a single sea animal, not a single fish would ever dare to compete with this creature!

Megalodon shark tooth dimensions

The big-toothed megalodon's hunting targets were... who do you think? Whales and sperm whales! The ancestors of modern whales, of course, were smaller - about 10 meters, the bigtooth shark easily bit their bodies in half, broke bones with one powerful blow of its head and immobilized the victim. In an attempt to preserve their species, sperm whales and whales began to hastily modernize, grow their bodies and develop mass, which, however, did not really help them. The kingdom lasted for millions of years Big tooth"in the oceans of the Earth - what has changed, why has this giant become completely extinct and has it become extinct?

Megalodon hunts whales (reconstruction)

According to scientists, the species Carcharocles megalodon did not survive one of the glaciations - the whales moved to cold waters, and the megashark could not follow them, because. her body temperature depended on the temperature of the surrounding water. It turns out that megalodons died of starvation a couple of million years ago - according to a number of ichthyologists, this is nonsense. Here are the facts: when pulling a deep-sea dredge in the Pacific Ocean, two megalodons were lifted aboard a research vessel, which is not a sensation in itself, because their teeth are found everywhere. But an analysis of these teeth showed that these two teeth are not millions of years old, but 24 and 11 thousand years old! It turns out that the “long-extinct” megalodons can safely exist today, because only 10% of the World Ocean has been studied.

Skeptics will say that the existence of a megalodon is impossible, since a fish of that size would certainly be noticed. What about the other three basking sharks that exist in the oceans today - the whale shark, the basking shark and the largemouth shark? They are huge, the first type is 20 meters long, the second is 10 meters, and the largemouth is 6 meters long. And what? Do you think it was impossible not to notice these sharks? Whereas how to explain that the species of whale sharks was discovered only 200 years ago, basking sharks were discovered several decades earlier (that is why they are called “giant”, although whales are much larger). But largemouth sharks were found completely by accident - one individual got stuck in the anchor target of a research vessel in the waters near the island of Oahu, Hawaii in 1976, since then only 25 individuals have been seen, and only dead on the coast.

The only thing that could make the existence of megalodon uncomfortable is the cooling of the oceans. There are two comments here: first, whale sharks are cold-blooded, but live and feed in not at all warm temperate waters; second, close relatives of the megalodon, great white sharks, are partly warm-blooded, i.e. their body is able to maintain a body temperature 10 degrees higher than the ocean temperature. And why couldn’t the megalodon have acquired the same heating system? It would be fair to say that whale sharks more heat bodies are of no use, since their prey - plankton - will not run away from them anywhere, therefore, there is simply no need for them to rush. But for a shark hunting for a large, live shark, body heat is very necessary - after all, cold muscles do not allow you to develop high speed, which means you will not be able to catch up with the prey.

Megalodon - hunting sperm whales

If the giant megalodon is ever discovered, it will be the biggest sensation in the scientific world since the lobe-finned coelacanth. However, this predator has already been seen, and not so long ago - at the beginning of the last century. Next time I’ll tell you this story, confirmed by a famous Australian ichthyologist...