Megalodon

[GuateGojira]

(09-21-2021, 05:05 PM)Apex Titan Wrote: Megalodon, Prehistoric Shark, Called 'Apex Predator Of All Time'

Think Tyrannosaurus rex was the ultimate predator? Think again.

Carcharocles megalodon, a.k.a. Megalodon, was "probably the apex predator of all time," according to paleontologist Chuck Ciampaglio. The Wright State University professor spoke to the Discovery Channel recently about Megalodon, a long-extinct prehistoric shark whose name literally translates as "big tooth."

In the video, Ciampaglio shows the Sharktooth Hill formation in Bakersfield, Calif., which would have been Megalodon's hunting ground more than 2 million years ago. Ciampaglio likens the area to Chesapeake Bay -- full of sharks, marine mammals and fish. However, unlike the Maryland-Virginia bay, the shallow sea was home to much larger predators.

Not much is known about the 50-plus-foot shark that once ruled the seas for 25 million years, as just about all that remains of it are its fossilized 7-inch-teeth. But paleontologists are convinced Megalodon would have been above the T. rex on the food chain.

"T. rex wouldn't have a chance against this thing," Ciampaglio told the Discovery Channel. "T. rex's head would fit in this guy's mouth."

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/m...ri18n=true

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

A reflection and a critical analysis:

It is always important to get acurate information to make a claim, or at least to check the source of those claims to make sure that is correct or not. Sometimes, preferences make an efect in the conclutions and the sources, like popular news papers help to increase the popular myths or to create new ones. This news article is a good example of it.

Taking a critical point of view, the article, which is short, focus in only ONE person, the paleontologist Chuck Ciampaglio, however the editor use this wild phrase from nowhere: "But paleontologists are convinced Megalodon would have been above the T. rex on the food chain".

I need to ask, what "Paleontologists"? They only interview one person and the editor (Sara Gates) jump to conclutions with no back up. Interestinlgy, the article was writen in 2012 and completelly ignore the existence of the giant Carcharodontosaurids and Spinosaurus (which were also apex predators of its time) and make a direct comparison with T. rex, which is an animal that do not live in the same habitat, do not hunt the same type of prey, nor live in the same time. Also, because is obviously a very old article it also ignore the existence of the equaly large Livyatan melvillei, described in 2017, and for the wrath of dinosaurs (and other prehistoric reptiles) fans, it disregards the giant reptiles of the Mesozoic like Kronosaurus and Mosasurus, among others, which also surpassed the 10 and 15+ meters long and from which we have complete skeletons from where to draw good conclutions. So clearly there is a gap in the conclutions of this article and we can't take it seriously at all.

Finally, and this is the sad part, since they mention Discovery Channel, we know that this is not a serious article at all. It is well know that Discovery is no longer the old good scientific channel that used to be and that they constantly created the false documentaries to increase the audience, one of them about Megalodon, one tv show that was HIGHLY critizice by experts as it created the silly idea that Megalodon still live in our days. It is no coincidence that the article was published in 2012 and a couple of months latter the unfamous false-documentary Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives was realized in 2013 by the same channel.

There is a tendency to increse the mythology of large predators, but there is a point where the reliabily of the information is sacrificed by the rating, and this is what this type of articles and channels had done in the last years. There is no such a thing as the "apex predator of all times", because we have not a clear idea of the hunting techniques, prey type and the speed and agility of the large predators in the different eras. Even worst, there is still no concensus about the real size of Megalodon and we need to add that there is plenty of evidence that support that this shark was NOT a giant version of the great white shark, but the people that study it insist in using it as the main comparsion. Interesingly, they results are allways different and contradictory, even using the same modern animal as model! It is really confusing. 

Definitellly, this article from Sara Gates is no different from the tons of news papers that exagerate the conclutions of scientific studies and at the end, when you read the real papers, it shows something completelly different. It came to my mind the article about the scaled skin of the T. rex, all the news saying that T. rex did not had featers, but they omited the HUGE fact that the skin patches were smaller than a tumb! The same authors accepted this fact and a critical review of the paper showed innacuraciones in they claims.

Now, about the images, the first one shows a white shark attacking "something", because that thing is definitelly not a whale. With no scale in the image, most fans use it to claim that Megalodon hunted whales of its same size, but like I explained in other topics, no marine animal surpassed the 10 meters in those days, most of them were between 4 to 7 meters, only Livyatan and Megalodon surpassed the 15 meters.

The second image is anachronic, as no orca (Orcinus orca) lived in the time of Megalodon. This is like the images that shows giant white sharks (poor copies of Megalodon) hunthing giant sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus), in a time where sperm whales of that species did not existed at all. The only species related with the modern orca was Orcinus citoniensis that measured about 4 meters long (only one specimen found) and the sperm whales of its time measured a maximum of about 6-7 meters at the most. 


I we could make deep analysis of all those news articles, we will found that fiction is killing the true, all in the name of entertainment. Reply