Megalodon

[GuateGojira]

(01-03-2022, 09:19 PM)Apex Titan Wrote: I agree with some of your points, they make sense and I know Discovery channel has lost its credibility and is known for making several fake documentaries or "mockumentaries". But I think what that article means by calling Megalodon the 'Apex predator of all time' is that for its ecosystem, compared to other marine and terrestrial apex predators, the Megalodon was the most dominant and greatest apex predator of its domain. Even more dominant and formidable than the T-Rex was for his environment. Thats what I think they mean by saying that. Of course you can't compare a land-based apex predator to marine apex predators. Different environments/terrain, different type of prey, challenges, enemies etc....

Based on numerous scientific documentaries I've seen (not on Discovery) throughout the years on prehistoric marine predators, I've consistently seen many marine biologists, scientists, and experts widely acknowledge and regard the Megalodon to be the most formidable and greatest marine apex predator that ever lived. The 'King of the Sea' like many call it. No one mentions the Livyatan Melvillei, to be honest with you, I've seen none. There's no doubt that the Livyatan whale was a formidable apex predator in its own right, but marine predator experts and biologists seem to widely agree that the Megalodon, overall, was THE ultimate marine apex predator that ever lived.

Megalodon is considered to be the largest apex predator that ever lived too, and possessing the most powerful biteforce of any marine/terrestrial predator of all time.

Also, there's nothing unreliable about the other articles I posted. What's wrong with 'ScienceDaily' ?? Thats a website where all the latest research and science news is posted. The other article from 'Livescience' also reported factual information. Whats the problem?

While I agree with you that there's no such thing as the "Apex predator of all times", I definitely think though, that the Megalodon was the greatest marine apex predator of all time. I know you'll probably disagree with me, but this is my view based on many scientific documentaries and sources I've seen.

Lastly, there's no way of knowing how Megalodon looked like, period....as no human being has ever seen one. Its impossible to know. It could have resembled a giant great white shark, or maybe not. We'll never know, its all speculation.

I will like to touch a couple of points here.

1 - You say that Megalodon was more dominant and formidable than T. rex. There is no such a thing, check that in the habitat and timeframe of T. rex (late Cretaceous in North America) there was no other predator that matched its size and power, no other, in fact the nich for middle sized predators was occupied by juvenil T. rex! The next predator in the food chaing will be Dakotaraptor with only 350 kg (compare that with the 9 tons of Rex). In the case of Megalodon, it had a competitor, it was Livyatan, which matched its size and mass, so there were two predators in the same enviroment and based on this, T. rex will be more "dominant" from your point of view. In fact, the case of Megalodon will be more like Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus, two big similar sized predators sharing the same area.

2 - About the documentaries, please check that Megalodon is known to science since 1667 and described several times, reconstructed, and even we have movies of it. It covers all the popular media and there are even crepy-theories about it. On the other side, Livyatan was discovered and described until 2010, there is a difference of 343 years! There is no doubth about why Megalodon is in the mind of people and Livyatan not. About documentaries, the serious ones at least and not the youtube videos made by fans and they computers, all of them are before 2010, there is not a single documentary, for prehistoric marine mammals, made after that date (as far I know). Now you see, is not that scientist ignore Livyatan, is that they don't knew about it and now that the interest for scientific documentaries is almoust lost, I doubth that anyone will made a new documentary for TV or Cinema. Ask to any people about Megalodon and anyone will tell you about the giant shark, but ask about Livyatan and I bet you that no one, except for prehistoric-fans like us, will tell you what it is.

3 - Again, Megalodon is no longer considered the largest apex predator, not in all the educated circles at least. Also, there are no studies about the bite force of Livyatan, so we can't say that Megaldon bites the harder. Even worst, did not you that the studies of Megalodon bite force are estimations made on assuptions, don't you? We don't have the skull of a Megalodon so those bite force studies should be take like a grain of salt.

4 - I did not say ANYTHING about the ScienceDaily or the Livescience article in my previous post. Can you please read it again? Also, those news reports are not always 100% accurate, is much better to read the original papers. I will like to read the paper that LiveScience refer of, because it is very weird that they created an entire history based in just one tooth! Something there do not look right.

And about ScienceDaily, I am not surprised that we have new size estimations, in fact I will not surprised if Megalodon was smaller or bigger than all those estimations in the dozens of documents about it. What the fans need to take in count is that all those measurements are estimated from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail tip, probably like on these two forms, the TOT or the TLn:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

That means that these sizes depends of how is the reconstruction of the shark and as we know that Megalodon had an heterocercal tail, is possible that great part of that length belonged to the tail flip. That means that the hipotetical maximum size of 20 meters long for Megalodon could be about 16 meters in PRC size and that is using the TLn measurement, if we use the TOT form, then the 20 meters Megalodon will be about 15 meters in the PRC length. Finally, remember that they are using a white shark in this example, so using a real heterocercal shark like the basking shark or the sand tiger shark, the tail flip will be bigger and the difference larger too.

5 - The point of view of a particular person may be biased towards the likes of the person, so I am not going to touch that part. However, while we had more than 300 years of papers, documentaries, movies and crepy-pastas about the mytical Megalodon, I am not surprised that it will take time to acept the fact that it was not the "undisputed king" of sea. We don't know what other species are yet to be discovered, Livyatan is a great example. 

6 - While there is no form to know how Megalodon looks like at 100%, I will not say that there is no way at all. In fact, using relatives like Cretolamna appendiculata, which is very well conserved, we can get a good idea of how Megalodon could look like. Besides, we can't discard that maybe, in the future and with a HUGE luck, someone could found a complete mandible, or maybe an asociated mandible-spine fossil. Who knows........ Reply