Megalodons: Everything you need to know
I’m not into sharks or anything. But it’s fascinating how creatures THIS BIG once ruled the ocean. I found them very interesting when I first heard about it. So, here, I’ve put down all the facts and figures that you need to know about these humongous beasts.
HOW BIG WERE THESE PREHISTORIC APEX PREDATORS? (Size and Physical Features)
According to Natural History Museum (NHM), the average size of an adult megalodon ranged from about 15 (49.2 feet) to 18 meters (58.7 feet) in length. Although, Encyclopedia Britannica claims that the largest among them could have been a whopping 25m (82 feet) long. That’s right, 5m longer than 2 London buses put together.
Moreover, a recent research led by Jack A. Cooper helped scientists deduce the true size of a megalodon. The results suggests that a 16m (52.5 feet) megalodon (three times longer than the largest recorded great white shark) would likely have had a head that is 4.65m (15.3 feet) long, a dorsal fin as long as an adult human (1.6m) and a tail about 3.85m (12.6 feet) high.
Talking about the mass of these creatures, studies estimates that the body mass of adult megalodons ranged from roughly 30,000 kg (66,000 pounds) to more than 65,000 kg (143,000 pounds), adult females being larger (in both length and mass) than adult males. That’s about 50 tons less than an adult blue whale.
However, without a complete megalodon skeleton, all these figures were completely based on the size of the animal’s teeth which was about 18cm high. These teeth can tell us a lot, like what these mahoosive creatures ate.
WHAT DID THEY EAT? (Predators and Preys)
In addition to being the world’s largest shark, megalodons may have been the largest marine predator to have ever existed. Megalodon was an apex predator, or top carnivore, in the marine environments it inhabited. Fossil evidence shows that the Megalodon primarily fed on large marine mammals including baleen whales, dolphins, sea lions, as well as sea turtles and large fish. Younger Megalodon sharks probably sought out smaller prey, while a 60 foot adults hunted larger whales. To talk about how much it ate, an adult Megalodon shark may have needed up to 1200 kg (2,500 pounds) of food per day. That’s like eating 2 cows per day!
While humans have been measured with a bite force of around 1,317 Newtons (N), researchers have estimated that megalodon had a bite of between 108,514 and 182,201N and great white sharks have been predicted to be able to bite down with a force of 18,216N. Guess what the bite force of a T. Rex is? It’s just around 57,000N.
Megalodons’ teeth are very common since almost all fossil remains of them are teeth. This is because they frequently produce teeth throughout their entire lives. Depending on what they eat, sharks lose a set of teeth every one to two weeks, getting through up to 40,000 teeth in their lifetime.
WHERE DID THEY LIVE? (Reproduction & Territoriality)
Like the modern-day bull shark, megalodons gave birth in specific nursery habitats that included protected bays and estuaries. These locations provided the shark pups with plenty of fish and a safe environment to grow, away from the larger predators of the open ocean and offshore zones. Scientists have discovered megalodon nursery habitats in Panama, Maryland, the Canary Islands, and Florida.
They were mostly adapted to warm tropical and subtropical locations around the globe. The species was so widely spread that megalodon teeth have been found on every continent except Antarctica and hence is considered cosmopolitan.
Like the dinosaurs, the megalodon liked warmth. During its time, it hunted in the warm, shallow seas that covered much of the planet. Researchers have found lots of their teeth off the east coast of North America, along the coasts and at the bottom of saltwater creeks and rivers of North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. They are also quite common off the coast of Morocco and parts of Australia. They can even be found in the UK near Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex, although they are extremely rare in the UK and tend to be of poor quality.
HOW DID THEY DISAPPEAR? (Extinction)
Presumed to have died about 2.6 million years ago during the Pliocene Epoch, the trigger event for the extinction of these huge predators seems to have been global cooling. It may have contributed in the extinction of the megalodon in a number of ways. The reduction of the temperature would have to mean that Megalodons would have required even much more food to deal with cooler temperatures. As the adult sharks were dependent on tropical waters, the drop in ocean temperatures likely resulted in a significant loss of habitat. It may also have resulted in the megalodon’s prey either going extinct or adapting to the cooler waters and moving to where the sharks could not follow.
Although it did play some part, however, climate change wasn’t the only reason in the extermination of these behemoths. The rise of new predators, evolution of the Orcas, also known as the Killer Whale might have been the other cause for the disappearance of the megalodons. There is fossil evidence that shows predator/prey interaction between megalodon and the Orcas as exhibited by megalodon tooth marks on the bones of the Orcas. Apart from the addition of these killer whales in competition for food, the ancestors of great whites might as well have played its part in making the Megalodons strive for food.
One article even has a theory that a supernova killed of the megalodon. Like really? Check this out.
COULD THEY STILL EXIST?
If a creature that big still lived, don’t you think we would know about it? You might as well wonder if it might still exist underwater in deep seas. But, given the fact that it’s a warm-water species, it wouldn’t be able to survive at colder temperatures where it has a better chance of going unnoticed. So yeah, to sum it up, the only place where it was last found was in the movie “THE MEG”.
TLDR; 8 Alarming Facts about the Megalodon :
- Largest Predator that ever lived in earth’s history.
- Teeth could reach over 7 inches.
- Not closely related to the great white shark.
- Ate whales for breakfast.
- Teeth are relatively common fossils.
- Had cosmopolitan (worldwide) distribution.
- Went extinct around 2.6 million years ago.
- Had most powerful bite of any known animal.
