Megalodon is not only the largest prehistoric shark ever built; It is the largest marine predator in Earth's history, far surpassing modern great white sharks and ancient reptiles such as Liopleurodon and Kronosaurus. Below you will find 10 interesting facts about megalodons.
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Megalodons grow to 60 feet long
Since megalodon has thousands of fossilized teeth but only a few scattered bones, its exact size has been a matter of debate. Over the past century, paleontologists have come up with estimates, based largely on tooth size and analogies with modern great white sharks, ranging from 40 to 100 feet from head to tail, but the consensus today is that adults are 55 to 60 feet long and weigh 50 to 75 tons — and some excess individuals may be larger.
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Megalodon loves to chew giant whales
Megalodon's diet is suitable for apex predators, prehistoric whales that swam the Earth's oceans during the Pliocene and Miocene periods, but also preys on dolphins, squid, fish, and even giant turtles (their equally massive shells, although they are hard, cannot withstand a bite force of 10 tons; See next slide). Megalodon may even meet the giant prehistoric whale Leviathan!
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The bite force of megalodon is the most powerful of all living things ever created
In 2008, a joint research team from Australia and the United States used computer simulations to calculate the bite ability of megalodons. The results can only be described in a horrific way: the modern great white shark clamped its jaw with a force of about 1.8 tons per square inch, while the megalodon bit its prey with 10.8 to 18.2 tons of force — enough to crush the skull of a prehistoric whale as easily as crushing a grape, far more than the bite force produced by Tyrannosaurus rex.
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Megalodon's teeth are more than seven inches long
Megalodon did not acquire the name "Megalodon" for nothing. The teeth of this prehistoric shark were jagged, heart-shaped, and more than half a foot long; In contrast, great white sharks' largest teeth are only about three inches long. You'd have to go back 65 million years — again, none other than T-Rex — to find a creature with a bigger helicopter, though some of the saber-toothed tigers' prominent canine teeth were also on the same court.
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Megalodons like to bite off the fins of their prey
According to at least one computer simulation, megalodon's hunting style differed from that of modern great white sharks. Great white sharks dive directly into the soft tissues of their prey (e.g., carelessly exposed abdomen or wading swimmer's legs), megalodon's teeth are particularly well-suited for biting through hard cartilage, and there is some evidence that this giant shark may have first clipped off the victim's fins (making it impossible to swim) and then pounced on the final kill.
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The surviving relative of megalodon is the great white shark
Technically, the megalodon is called Carcharodon megalodon, which means it is a species of the larger shark genus (Carcharodon). Also technically, the modern great white shark is called Carcharodon carcharias, which means it belongs to the same genus as megalodon. However, not all paleontologists agree with this classification, claiming that megalodon and great white sharks are striking similarities derived through a process of convergent evolution.
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Megalodons are much larger than the largest marine reptiles
The natural buoyancy of the ocean allows "apex predators" to grow to enormous sizes, but none are larger than megalodons. Some giant marine reptiles of the Mesozoic era, such as Liopleurodon and Kronosaurus, weighed up to 30 or 40 tons, while modern great white sharks can only crave a relatively paltry three tons. The only marine animal that exceeds 50 to 75 tons of megalodon is the plankton-feeding blue whale, known to weigh more than 100 tons.
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Megalodon's teeth were once known as "tongue stones"
Megalodon's teeth have been found all over the world from ancient to modern times due to sharks constantly losing their teeth – thousands of discarded chopping vegetables in their lifetimes – and because megalodons are spread across the globe (see next slide). It wasn't until the 17th century that a European court physician named Nicholas Steno identified the peasant's precious "tongue stone" as shark teeth; For this reason, some historians describe Steno as the world's first paleontologist .
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Megalodon is distributed worldwide
Unlike some sharks and marine reptiles of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Generations – limited to the coastlines of certain continents or inland rivers and lakes – megalodons enjoyed a truly global distribution, terrorizing whales in warm-water oceans around the world. Apparently, the only thing stopping adult megalodons from venturing into solid ground is their huge size, which would run aground helplessly like a 16th-century Spanish galleon.
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No one knows why megalodon went extinct
So megalodons were huge, ruthless, and apex predators of the Pliocene and Miocene eras. What went wrong? Well, this giant shark may be doomed to fail by global cooling (peaking in the last ice age) or the giant whales that make up most of its diet gradually disappear. By the way, some believe that megalodons still lurk in the depths of the ocean, as popularized on the Discovery Channel show Megalodon: Monster Sharks Alive, but there is absolutely no credible evidence to support this theory.