From many film and television works or related materials, the most discolored marine creatures are bloodthirsty, sharp-toothed, and aggressive sharks.
Or since the Cambrian Period more than 500 million years ago, the huge and ferocious predators in the ocean, dragon king whales, Dunn's fish, odd shrimp, shanglong, canglong, etc., although they have been extinct before the emergence of humans, but when humans find relevant fossils and uncover the true face of those creatures, they invariably make people feel a chill in their backs.
But if you want to choose the strongest predator among the many ferocious creatures that have appeared in the ocean, the ancient creatures mentioned above must have to stand on the sidelines, and the strongest "killer" in the ocean is none other than the megalodon shark, and is even considered to be the largest predator on the earth since history.
It is worth mentioning that the megalodon shark is "big teeth" in Greek, and megalodon fossils have been found in the Renaissance, but their huge triangular tooth fossils have been mistaken for the remains of a giant snake or a dragon on the seabed.
How terrifying the megalodon shark really is, perhaps even the "fierce characters" that have appeared on the earth such as Dunn's fish, great white sharks, and Tyrannosaurus rex seem to have only trembling in front of the "big guy" of the megalodon shark.
Through fossil sampling and analysis, the number of megalodon teeth not only reached 250, the length is more than 20 centimeters and extremely sharp, and the maximum diameter after the mouth is opened can reach about 3 meters.
In order to restore the ability of megalodons to hunt, scientists through simulation experiments, speculated that the bite force of megalodon sharks can reach 30 tons or more, according to the fossils of megalodon teeth, biologist Bashiford Dean reconstructed the mouth model of megalodon sharks, and this model can not only swallow a cow in one bite, but also directly cut whales into two pieces, which is the most powerful organism known on Earth.
Later, the scientific community calculated through the length of the megalodon's teeth that its body length may reach 30 meters, which is similar to that of blue whales. With the discovery and support of relevant data, scientists finally calculated that the length of the megalodon shark was about 18-20 meters. At this length, an adult megalodon will weigh no less than 60 tons, which is equivalent to the weight of 10 African elephants combined.
Obviously, such a weight may be a little bit different from the huge marine life such as the blue whale or the bowhead whale, but it should be known that the blue whale and the bowhead whale belong to the "filter feeding animal", and the megalodon shark is a veritable carnivore, so it is also known as the largest carnivore known to have survived on the earth, and for the animals in the biological world, its combat ability is often not only to see the size, but also to look at the "fierceness".
Megalodon may not be the largest creature in the ocean, but it is the strongest killer on the planet, mainly because when it opens its mouth with 250 sharp giant teeth, it is equivalent to opening a door with a diameter of 3 meters, which for any creature, it seems that the opening is not a mouth, but a door to hell.
Due to the long and sharp teeth, megalodon sharks often do not need to tear hard for prey, but can directly "cut off" the prey with one bite.
According to the speculation of scientists, the megalodon shark is also large in size, so the relatively large marine life will undoubtedly become its ideal hunting range, such as blue whales, fin whales, etc., and in view of the era of megalodon shark survival, it has not yet evolved a huge fin whale, most of which are small baleen whales with a body length of less than 10 meters.
The inference concluded that when megalodons spotted flocks of small fin whales, they would dive deeper into the ocean floor and sneak closer, turn their heads upwards after sneaking under their prey, and with the sheer force of their tails, they would swoop in and bite the small fin whales with their mouths wide open. Often, it only takes a breath, and the small fin whale is directly killed on the spot.
According to fossil inferences, megalodons first appeared in the Miocene 23 million years ago, and survived until the last century, 2.6 million years ago, when they were completely extinct.
That is to say, megalodons have dominated the ocean for more than 20 million years, and such a survival cycle is enough to positively prove the survival of megalodon sharks, because scientists generally believe that the cycle of a species from emergence to extinction is usually 5 million years, while the survival cycle of megalodon sharks is more than 4 times higher, which can be considered that megalodon sharks have few opponents in the field of life that can threaten their survival.
The main reason why the megalodon shark is still difficult to escape the fate of extinction is that the marine environment in which the megalodon shark lives is between 55 degrees north and south latitudes, and during the Miocene to the Pliocene, the entire earth began to cool, so that the number of small and medium-sized organisms living in the sea continued to decrease, and the megalodon lost food.
Marine life that can adapt to the environment or search for food in colder polar seas can also evolve stronger survival skills, such as some small baleen whales evolving into larger baleen whales, and can also achieve more large creatures, forming a certain competition with megalodon sharks.
This also caused great survival pressure on juvenile megalodon sharks, which gradually went extinct under the double blow of harsh environments and competitors.
The scientific community for the demise of the megalodon shark also has another speculation, it is likely that the megalodon shark did not go extinct, but in the harsh living environment has been evolved, sneaking deeper into the ocean for reproduction, and this speculation is based on the current scientists found that the megalodon fossils are not complete, most of them are only tooth fossils, not vertebral fossils.
However, Greek biologists believe that the failure to find the completed megalodon fossil is mainly because its body is mostly composed of cartilage, and the cartilage fossil is not easy to preserve, so that humans have not found the completed megalodon fossil so far.