(06-30-2023, 07:34 PM)Apex Titan Wrote: @Spalea  @GuateGojira 

I'll respond to you guys later when I have time.

(06-30-2023, 06:14 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(06-29-2023, 06:31 PM)Apex Titan Wrote: There's no way that a single Leviathan would be able to defeat multiple large male megalodon's. That video is highly unrealistic and ridiculous. Leviathan was just an ancient sperm whale with much larger teeth and more predatory, but would be no match for an adult megalodon. The megalodon was larger, more powerful and more lethally equipped for killing than any other ocean predator ever.

IMHO, the only way the Leviathan whale would stand a chance, is if a whole pod attacked a single megalodon.

@Spalea I want your honest take on this as well.

I have a question... according to the general consensus of the worlds foremost marine predator experts, researchers and paleontologists, nothing in the ocean could have taken on a megalodon, nothing could have challenged it, so why do you think they say this?

You might find maybe one expert who thinks a Leviathan may stand a chance or being capable of defeating a megalodon, but the vast majority of the worlds marine predator experts adamantly state that the megalodon was the undisputed apex predator and ruler of the prehistoric ocean and could have killed anything it wanted to. Recent scientific research also shows this.

The Leviathan (Livyatan Melvillei) doesn't get mentioned by the experts (even in documentaries) for a good reason. Only on animal forums do posters mention the Leviathan to be a "worthy opponent" for a megalodon. Why?

Prehistoric animals are a mystery, best thing we can do is to try to study modern animals and see how they could correlate with the past ones. It sounds simple but there are several problems, as many of the past animals are just far related with the modern ones and we know that modern animals had particular behavious that we will not knew if we could not observe them directly.

The video is just a fan art, nothing more and nothing less, no more valuable than the Rex vs Spino fight in JP3. We can't avoid people express they ideas, I learned that in the hard way.

But talking about the real animals, we don't know if these species were solitary or if lived in groups, and we can only "guess" based in modern species. Most of sharks are solitary and they just come in groups when there is a good food source like happen with the white and tiger sharks, so we can guess that most of the time Carcharocles (otodus) megalodon was solitary but we can also guess that they could tolerate each other under special  circunstances. About Livyatan melvillei we have the same problem, we can say that modern whales are groupal, but that is an oversimplification and even social animals like orcas have individuals (large males most of the time) that travel alone, and to add more salt to the soup, the modern relatives of this species, which are the two genus of sperm whales, have completelly different behaviors, so we can guess that as they are cetaceans they could travel in groups of "pods", but if they are like modern Physeter, males will be loners. So, as you can see, this is just a game of probabilities, based in more or less closer relatives, and the evidence suggest a behaviour contrary to what we see in the video. In fact, I will suggest that the video should be a big Megalodon killing young and female Livyatans until a big male arrive and kill it, that will have more sense honestly. 

Now about the experts and why Livyatan is not mentioned. Honestly, tiger supporters had the same problem with the romans, if tiger won must of the fights why the romans supported the lion as the most powerfull cat? Well, the answer was simple, tigers were know in Europe until the time of Alexander the great and was only one skin, and alive tigers arrived to Rome like a gift to Augustus until year 11 B.C.E. for the dedication of the Theater of Marcellus. In fact, no more than 200 tigers were presented to the Romans in all they history, a ridicuous amount if we take in count that romans killed more than 300 or even 500 lions in just one show, and they had many of this shows! Lions were highly familiar to the Romans, and the new arrival was no match for the imagination and "love" for the old signs, so tiger were never familiar to the Romas as lions do. Now, it you ask to any marine predator experts about what is a Livyatan, I can tell that not all of them know about it, in fact prehistoric marine mammals are highly unknown to many experts and also most of the people outside, remember that we have less than 10 papers that mention it (only 4 specific about it) while on the other hand Megalodon is incredible famous, almoust like T. rex. To put other analogy, ask people about Mapusaurus and they will have no idea what you are talking about. We have no documental, no movie, nothing about Livyatan, or any other prehistoric cetacean, apart from Basilosaurus and maybe Brygmophyseter (and this last one was baddly represented), so there is no surprise why there is a "consensus" that Megalodon is the "champion". But this is going to change in the future years, now that the knowledge is been shared at higher speed and more people is knowing about the prehistoric cetaceans. In fact, there is many people that is surprise to know how small where the first whales.

So, playing the card that "most of experts" or that documentaries/movies "adamantly" show that Megalodon is the undisputed king is not correct, because you are just taking advantage of the circumstances and the lack of knowledge, basically using a falacy to back up a statement without base.

If you going to back up an statement you must use facts, and there are no facts that Megalodon "won" agains Livyatan, or the other way around. The only thing that we know is that these two animals were the top predators of they area, that they compete for the same resources and that at the end both whent extinct. Also, remember that marine predators must of the time hunt smaller animales than themselves (orca is the exception, when hunt in groups), and "if" Livyatan lived in groups, with a similar size than the average sized Meg, probably the big shark will avoid  those pods of cetaceas and focus in the more easy prey like the "small" Cetotheriums. But all this is just speculation at the end, although based in the behaviour of modern animals.

I am not going to touch the point about sizes as is a real mess, because the "Meg" change every new study, and for "Liv" we have only one "official" estimation. However, at least, one more-or-less complete skull is better that a bunch of teeth and a lot of speculation, I think.

(06-30-2023, 08:22 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(06-30-2023, 07:34 PM)Apex Titan Wrote: @Spalea  @GuateGojira 

I'll respond to you guys later when I have time.

I was already reading your posts and debate in other Megalodon topic, and been honest you are severily overestimating this animal. Like Spalea said, we know that this is a huge apex predator, but you describe it like an invincible war machine, which is not the case.

Again, like I said to another poster, I don't care about Megalodon because, for me, is just a case of back and forth, we only have its tooth and some vertebrea and that is all, and from that is just pure speculation, its size change every new document and even the new articles that you quote shows a huge bias and lack of knowledge of the same authors, stating things like megalodons eating orcas like snacks, when orcas (modern ones at least) don't even lived with Megalodon. In fact, new hypotesis says that it was the white shark, smaller than the orca, which could help to drive the huge Meg to its extintion.

When I read those news articles I don't know if I am reading a sceintific article or guy trying to sell something. Too much sensacionalism, I will prefer to read the original documents, been honest.

EDIT: I know where this is going. Honestly I just returned from several months and the last thing that I want it to discuss something irrelevant like this. So, I will leave this now, if someone what to believe that Meg was the terminator of the seas is ok, I simple don't care. I will focus in what I DO CARE, which are tigers and other modern animals. I leave the debate to the other posters.

(06-30-2023, 02:00 PM)Spalea Wrote: @Apex Titan :

Well, @GuateGojira has magistrally answered in my place. What could I add ? I didn't want to make you angry or to cast doubt systematically what you tell. I only ask a few questions, always the same... You say that the biggest megalodon specialists think as you do. Perhaps yes, but I don't care of their assertions  and stay with my doubts.
Of course this video seems to be ridiculous in your opinion. It isn't a scientific video of course, it has no one scientific value, but I find it good made. With little means, we just feel sperm whale's and shark's skins. Very realistic, I have even a deeper appreciation as concerns these videos about dinosaurs and terrestrial animals. But that 's an other subject.
About megalodons I always only stated on this: they were cartilaginous fishs. So in other words, no one possible fossilization of the bones, except the teeth. And about teeth what can we do ? To compare them with the actual tiger and white shark's teeth. And to make or estimate a volume ratio. And from that, estimating the megalodon's weight. Simple isn't it ? No because we don't stop reading some extrapolations, some always growing extrapolations could I say. I just say it changes everything according to whether the meg weighed 20 or 65 tons (your last estimation). In the first case, the megalodon had to sustain a competition with other huge predators, in the second case it completely destroyd the concurrency. You're seemingly adopting this last hypothesis, adult megalodon was invincible. And not an indolent shark as you told in a previous thread. OK ! How, in this case, this specy could have been roaming so much time, 20 millions years, inside oceans ? I only see one possible explanation: megalodons were extraordinary scarce. An invincible predator systematically killing big preys and other big predators cannot have a geological duration of life (look upon us ! We are quickly going towards our extinction with our actual bullshit) except because of its extrem scarcity.
So, what was the limitating factor of its population ? Extremely low rate of reproduction ? Perhaps... A  worm is in the fruit.