Hello everyone, it's time for "Tao Brother Blind White Life", today nagging whales, no accident, this should be the last article in the history of ancient marine evolution, and see and cherish.
Last time, it was mentioned that the entire Mesozoic dragon family (lizards) ruled the earth, and the soldiers were widespread, they were driven by dinosaurs on the vast land, giant crocodiles hovered in freshwater lakes and rivers, pterosaurs soared in the sky, sea climbs controlled the sparkling blue sea, for the first and only time in the history of biology, the entire blue star's sea, land and air were incorporated into the vast territory of the same order of animals without dead ends.
Until the Cretaceous meteorite fatally arrived, the empire of the dragon clan's heyday was instantly destroyed, the earth entered the Paleogene, and biological evolution also entered a new chapter.
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The overlord fell, the shuffle on the major ecological niches was also carried out, and although the earth was devastated and desolate, the lucky ones still took advantage of the power vacuum brought about by the mass extinction and impatiently planned the blueprint for the future survival of their own people.
Pterodactyls fall from the sky, and the suborder took the opportunity to soar into the sky and flapped its wings;
The dinosaurs fell to the ground, and the beasts quickly swept away the haze and ran rampant on the continent;
The shadow of the dragon is buried deep in the seabed, and the sharks that have been silent for nearly 200 million years immediately and steadily take over the scepter and begin their road to dominating the ocean.
About 65 million years ago, a cartilaginous fish called the Nahn's eartooth shark began to sweep the ocean, and after defeating a descendant of a dragon tribe trying to restore, the giant ancient cup sea snake, the shark officially won the sea in the Paleocene 62 million years ago.
An ancient cup snake with a body length of 9 meters and 360 kg
Sharks have a fateful fate, in addition to a brief period of time in the Permian period without natural enemies, almost generations have been suppressed by various overlords in turn, at this moment a "salty shark turned over", it is difficult to regain the crown of "top predators", they naturally strive to govern, hoping that this glory will last for generations.
The shark learned the lesson of being oppressed by the dragons before, abandoned the fancy evolutionary branch, and focused on getting bigger and bigger, under this idea, the Eocene oblique-eared shark even existed in an individual with a body length of 14 meters, which was infinitely close to the panel data of the dragon.
The average body length is 10 meters, and the maximum can reach 14 meters
For a time, countless sea creatures lived under the fear of sharks all day long, and sea snakes, turtles, rayfin fish, mollusks and even sea crocodiles all became the belly prey of sharks.
It's just that the sharks that are invincible at that time can't imagine that they will unconsciously repeat the mistakes of 180 million years ago again - the most threatening opponent is not in the ocean, but from the land of that end.
During the Triassic Period, the dragon clan led by ichthyosaurs went to the sea, and the sharks declined. In the Eocene, an inconspicuous mammal stormed the shark's territory and began a fierce battle between the two sides that had accumulated tens of millions of years of corpses on the seabed, which has not stopped.
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Indra Pig, also translated as Indohos Beast
This little beast, which resembled a fox, was called the Ingen Pig, and no matter from what angle it looked at, it did not have even the slightest hint of the king's aura of the dominant side. If there is something special, that is, in order to avoid the pursuit of large predators, it can go into the water for 5 minutes, which is a poor diving talent, more like a talisman in the chaotic world than a skill reserve for the king.
But just as no one expected a small cliff lizard to evolve into a dragon, no one could have imagined that such a slightly obscene inland pig would attack into a majestic sea monster - a whale in the future.
More than 50 million years ago, in the South Asian subcontinent, the Indian pig opened the cetacean version 2.0 - Bucky whale.
Bucky Whale
And perhaps just a few million years later, the cetaceans have entered version 3.0 without stopping, the walking whale. They spread the good times, before the no beast tribe minions, after the dragon tribe between the tide sneak attack, but due to the direction of evolution, the whale once squeezed out the ecological niche that belonged to the crocodile, in addition to preying on freshwater fish, but also played the trick of ambushing the animals that came to drink water, and repeatedly succeeded.
A whale that likes to engage in sneak ambushes
The years are quiet, but the whales have not forgotten their historical mission, and in them, they have completed at least 3 crucial points of cetacean evolution:
First, the whale has unlocked the talent tree of "extreme giantization", and the late whale body is about 3 meters long and weighs more than 700 kilograms;
Second, through skeletal isotope analysis, walking whales sometimes drink fresh water and sometimes seawater, which means that they have extended the tentacles of mammals to the vast ocean;
Third, they began to evolve sharp teeth and increasingly developed jaw muscles.
When an animal begins to soar on the road of "mega-mega", "strengthening the bite force", then they definitely have the ambition to become an upper predator, and whether they can reach the top in the future depends on the creation.
Unfortunately, what happened later proved that the creation of the descendants of the whales was not very good.
At least in the beginning, it was.
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Halfway through the Eocene, an ethnic group under the whale officially entered version 4.0, officially entered the sea as a "protocyan cetacean", thought that it could open up the deep blue territory, but unexpectedly bumped into the shark's Senran fangs head-on, which was the first confrontation between the two marine twin flames in the future.
Schematic diagram of the restoration of the original whale
However, sharks at that time had been roaming the sea for more than ten million years, and although they had lost a considerable number of giant combat members due to the "Paleocene-Eocene Extreme Heat Event", they still held the domination of the ocean in general, and their size was more exaggerated than ever, and even for more efficient hunting, they evolved cutting serrations at the edges of their teeth.
Shark tooth fossils, which can clearly see the serrations on the edges
The shark learned that the original cetaceans had gone to sea, and only one ear-tooth shark was sent to almost let the mammals' march plan die in place. After losing the first battle, some of the original whales returned home, and they disappeared in the long years of evolution that followed, while the part of the original whales with strong combat effectiveness that remained were deadly with the sharks.
The most famous of them is the Dragon King Whale, the fossil of this ferocious giant whale was first excavated by humans, it was mistaken for a huge sea snake, and even some "experts" pieced together their fragmentary skeleton fossils according to imagination:
People initially thought that the Dragon King Whale should look like this
But subsequent studies showed that they were actually mammals and one of the top predators of their time, capable of killing and preying on large sharks.
The Dragon King whale is slender and easy to hunt in shallow seas with complex terrain, more like a mammalian version of a dragon
It's just that sharks' military prowess is even greater after all, especially the eartooth sharks under their command, whether it is the Poseidon eartooth shark, which is as brutal as a mad dog, or the ocean giant sokolov eartooth shark, which is more than 14 meters in size, all of which are near the excavation of their tooth fossils, leaving behind the bones of other creatures covered with bite marks.
Ferocious Horiaceae
Poseidon Ear tooth shark, Sokolov ear tooth shark, Isis Dragon King Whale, West Todd Dragon King Whale...
The war between the sharks and whales continued day and night, burning the sky above the shallow seas of the late Eocene.
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"In this kingdom, you have to keep running to keep you where you are." - The Red Queen, Alice's Adventures
In 1973, the American biologist Van Warren proposed the famous "Red Queen Hypothesis" - in the process of species co-evolution, if the relationship between the two sides of the competition cannot be balanced, it is equivalent to extinction for the stagnator.
Countless confrontations, countless times of life and death, countless arms races, finally made both whales and sharks almost sacrifice two supreme gods of war in the history of earth biology about 15 million years ago, the megalodon shark and the Melville whale.
Look at the panel data.
Megalodon shark, generally about 14 meters in size, the largest can grow to 18 meters, extreme data speculate that there are 21 meters of individuals, weighing 50 to 70 tons, static bite force is the best for any creature of any era, up to 260,000 to 340,000 Newtons!
The largest megalodon, the smallest megalodon, today's great white shark and human comparison chart
The plum whale, according to the only reliable skull fossil recovery, is 17 meters long and weighs about 65 tons, but judging from the other fossil teeth of the whale that has been unearthed later, it is very likely that there will be a larger individual!
The only complete Fossil Leviathan whale skull
If it weren't for the need to restrain each other, I really can't imagine any reason for the creatures to evolve themselves into such a form, but even the mesozoic "Hell's Aquarium" where the monsters are rampant has never raised such a giant beast!
Regarding the pair of momentary Yu Liang, who is stronger?
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After reading a large number of scientific research materials and the deductions of paleontologists, I have come to some conclusions, and I am here to present you with ugliness -
First, both sides are top predators and there are no natural enemies.
Second, judging from the static physical attributes, the slightly robust megalodon shark is dominant, but considering the intelligence of mammals and the suppression of social social attributes, the plum whale seems to be more flexible in its combat style.
Third, as we all know, sharks have a weakness from ancient times to the present, that is, once they turn over, they will enter a semi-comatose and semi-sleeping state of "rigidity and static", so when two or more plum whales, like today's killer whales against great white sharks, knock the megalodon shark over, then the plum whale has a great advantage. But you may wish to think about it, as long as you go up and use your head to top it, you can manage three days of fullness, with the fierceness of the plum whale community, the megalodon shark should have been slaughtered in the Miocene, how can it last until the Pliocene 3 million years ago?
Fourth, limit the battle to one-on-one encounters, I think megalodons have a better chance. Because with the bite force of these two, neither of them can resist the other's thunder strike, and the first to bite wins!
Megalodon shark spindle-shaped body structure swims faster, the surface material of shark skin is less resistant underwater than the skin fold of the whale, and more importantly, sharks do not need to rely on the up-and-down swing of the spine like whales to accumulate elastic potential energy, their straight line acceleration and left and right steering are more rapid, one gear to five gears almost in an instant! Therefore, megalodon sharks are more likely to get the first hand than plum whales!
In summary, I think that usually, they will not deliberately provoke each other, once there is a conflict, in a one-to-many situation, the megalodon shark is not as good as the plum whale, one-on-one, the plum whale does not win much.
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The mighty plum whale disappeared forever before the end of the Miocene, while the old rival megalodon continued to swim in the sea for 9 million years, ushering in its own doom. They have coexisted in the sea for only 1 million years, a mere 8.7 billion hours, and when the bones of both sides are scattered into dust, it is as if two adjacent waves on the same sea can finally snuggle up to each other.
The time train rumbles past the station, and the platform is crowded with the late odd shrimp, Dun's fish, Taiman ichthyosaurus, Neptune dragon and countless former overlords, and who are waiting for the megalodon shark and plum whale who get off the train at this moment?
Where is this tragedy of life?
This, clearly, is a reunion.
(At the end of the series on the evolution of ancient marine life, I am Tao Ge, I have seen here, I hope to give a note.) ）