Megalodon - Extinction, Fossils, Sharks (2024)

FAQs

Is there any evidence that the megalodon is extinct? ›

That means lots of those lost megalodon teeth are around as fossils. Some are found at the bottom of the ocean; others washed up on shore. But nobody has ever found a megalodon tooth that's less than 3.5 million years old. That's one of the reasons scientists believe megalodon went extinct then.

Is the megalodon still alive? 'No. It's definitely not alive in the deep oceans, despite what the Discovery Channel has said in the past,' notes Emma. 'If an animal as big as megalodon still lived in the oceans we would know about it.

These studies suggested that shifting food-chain dynamics may have been the primary factor in megalodon's demise, as the availability of its primary food source, baleen whales, decreased and the numbers of its competitors—smaller predatory sharks (such as the great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias) and whales (such ...

Distribution. Fossil remains of megalodon have been found in shallow tropical and temperate seas along the coastlines and continental shelf regions of all continents except Antarctica.

The answer to the megalodon question is a resounding NO. Megalodon went extinct around 3.5 million years ago.

This gigantic shark with fearsome jaws certainly was real, but it went extinct long before humans walked the earth. Megalodon dominated prehistoric seas until its disappearance about 3.6 million years ago, in a period of geological time known as the Miocene.

Researchers studying sharks in the northwest Atlantic Ocean were shocked after they detected what appeared to be a massive 50-foot “megalodon” on sea scanners below their boat.

Leedsichthys problematicus, meaning "Alfred Leed's problem-causing fish", was another prehistoric ocean giant. Estimates put Leedsichthys at approximately 16.5m long, substantially larger than the average Megalodon.

Megalodons are larger than whale sharks, but the largest shark alive is a whale shark.

Megalodon may have been killed off by great white sharks, study suggests.

What is the largest shark ever recorded? ›

The biggest shark in the world is the whale shark

Though there are some reports of larger individuals, the biggest specimen ever reliably measured was 18.8 metres or nearly 62 feet long! That's bigger than a school bus!

The megalodon turns its body to place the mosasaur squarely in front of its jaws and chops down on the quivering flesh of the mosasaur's tail as it tries to slither away. As the megalodon bites down again and again the flailing mosasaur's muscles seize and then go limp as blood spills out into the water.

All of the continent's ice is freshwater and is a result of precipitation. There is no way that a magalodon would be able to find itself out of the ocean onto land and then be covered with precipitation. Megalodon went extinct 2.6 millions of years ago, before any of the ice currently on Antarctica formed.

"We still don't know the exact shape of its head, fins, or tail," Shimada said. Instead, megalodon might have resembled something closer to a mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus), co-lead author Phillip Sternes, a biologist at University of California Riverside, said in a statement.

A frozen megalodon was recently found, yielding exceptional revelations. A NASA team of 11 researchers journeyed to Antarctica. to study glacier melt and sea levels over 13 days. On the fourth day, a researcher discovered a massive 75 pound cod. trapped in ice while examining a glacier.

Megalodon fossil remains disappear from the fossil record approximately 2.5-3 million years ago. There is zero evidence in the fossil record of any species descended from megalodon, something that we should be seeing if in fact the megalodon had any living descendants.

A very small portion of the Zurich study's data — 6 out of 10,000 simulations — showed a 1% chance that these giant sharks could still be alive. That chance seems pretty slim, and the researchers wrote in the study that they rejected "popular claims of present-day survival of O. megalodon."

In fact, Megalodon might not even have been the largest predator in the ocean at the time it was alive - the recently discovered Leviathan whale (Livyatan melvillei) was potentially larger than Megalodon and occupied the same territorial waters.

The most common Megalodon teeth and thus the most affordable are collected by divers off the coast of North Carolina or in the rivers of South Carolina or Georgia. You will also frequently see teeth from Florida on the market as well as more exotic locations like Indonesia and Morocco.