Megalodon

Why Hello.

I have to say, it has been a shitting long time since I’ve created a new blog, I blame exams and spending to much time with Donee. X]

But after Stews occasional nags, I decided to write a phat one on something SUPER cool, SO READ!

So... Today I’m going to talk about prehistoric creatures that I believe could still be surviving, and expressing JUST how scary these things are ;]

I know you may be thinking we would know about these creatures if they still were alive and out there, but this isn’t the case at all.
1. We as humans only know about a very limited amount of the ocean, we can’t venture to deep before getting crushed through pressure, and there is a whole big lot that we haven’t covered yet.
2. These creatures probably live in the deeper waters anyway and don’t come near shallow grounds, so even what is deep to us would be most likely to shallow for them.

3. They may also be more intelligent now, so could be afraid of going to shallow as they could have a fear of humans, as we dump so much crap into the ocean and such...


Now for the talk on the Megalodon... I’ve been interested in this creature for some time now, and thanks to Donee and his Dad, I’ve been reading a brilliant book on it.

So, what is the Megalodon?

As most of you will probably know, it is a prehistoric shark, that is ancestors with the great white shark. The great white is said to be one of the biggest sharks alive today (ha!) at growing around 20ft on average.

The Megalodon however is quite a bit bigger. Reading up on this creature, most scientists guess that the Megalodon was around the size of 50-100ft.. Which is bigger than the blue whale (biggest mammal in the world supposedly) at around 60ft.

And if any of you have seen the blue whale on TV floating around, you will realise just how immensely big that is.

But, the size estimations are all based on fossilised teeth, which has two problems...

1. It has been proven that you can't actually fully estimate the size of a creature through teeth, even if you do create an outlook of the whole jaw, it still wouldn't fully tell you.

2. These teeth will be very old, so if the Megalodon is still alive today, there's a good chance it'll be even bigger.

So what really happened to the Megalodon then?

Well, there are a few theories.

One of which being that when the Ice Age hit, a freezing cold layer of water pushed these creatures into deeper water over the years, this would have caused them to be pushed into much greater pressures, where there bodies would have had to have grown in order to be able to handle such immense pressures, as they would have needed bigger lungs and such.

But in this incident, the Megalodons can't escape, not because they don't want to, but because they can't, they wouldn't be able to cope in such cold water.

But there is a theory on how it'd get out...

If say, a huge whale and shark or a whale and squid were fighting above and a lott of blood was shed, it could sink deep into the water (it's a whole lot of blood), megalodons having amazing senses would instantly rush to this smell and they could be carried through the cold water in this warm blood and reach shallower waters.

Of course, this is far fetched and it would need to be ALOT of blood for it to not disintegrate as it sinks down.

Another theory on how they could still be alive, which i'm reading in this book at the moment, is because of competition. Around the prehistoric period there were alot of other huge predators, of which even the Megalodons would have liked to have avoided.

These other predators would have eaten similar things to Megalodens, and due to them eating a wide amount of the food supply, the Megalodon went deeper into the water over time, searching for more food.
Due to them having to go deeper, there jaws would have had to adapted to get bigger, because there is little food in such deep waters, so they would have had to kept there mouths open and ready for any food sources to come swimming by.

Also, because of how dark it is down there, the Megalodon would have evolved it's senses to cope with living down there. Their eyes would be super sensitive as they don't really use them much (accept to detect faint glows which the megalodons luminous skin would have secreted).

The Megaloden in these cases would have liked to avoid shallower water at all costs, because the water is much lighter, and the light would have hurt their eyes intensely. It'd be the same as us staring at the sun for a prolonged period of time (except we'd go blind..But you get the jist).

So... What predators could have caused a creature such as the fierce Megalodon, to have to migrate deeper?

There were a number of prehistoric creatures that causes this.

These included the Pliosaurs...

These were ancestors of Nessy (which i've previously written about).
Accept, some were alot bigger, more teeth, and liked more meat...

Some of these species were quite small, only about 4-6ft, which is nothing compared to the megalodon.
But others reached up to 30-50ft!

Another was the Mosasaur...

These are ancestors of reptiles, said to be close relatives to the snakes... Hmm.

These bad boys were said to grow on average around 50ft. (phwoar!)

Another is called the Ichthyosaur

These are also ancestors of reptiles...But the largest recovered fossil of this creature was said to be around 75ft in length!
Woah...

Starting to see the competition Megalodons had to face? Eesh...

And at last...But by NO means least...

The Basilosaurus...

These creatures were said to be the King of Reptiles...And understandably

These creatures has a very unusual body form, very elongated, and described as the closest link between whale and snake you'd get.

These creatures were said to be around 60ft on average, BUT a fossilised skeleton was found at 114ft in length! Another scientist made an estimate through fossils that these creatures could be as big as 150ft long!

Shit me...

And these creatures had many ancestors who were made the same, and there were many other creatures competing for meat.

I would have hated to be a fish in those days...

Cryptozoologists DO say that these creatures could still be living these days. Especially the Pliosaur.

I think it's highly unlikely that they'd all still be living today, because it would be such a competition for food, and I doubt such huge creatures would have go un-noted for so long.

But there is a definite possibility that some of these types are still alive.

I'm very game for the Megalodons to still be surviving.

Although the Basilosaurus would be sweeeet also. :D

That concludes my blog today, I hope you enjoyed and perhaps are somewhat scared now, mwahahaha.

Or at least intrigued...

I'll make sure to keep up with blogging better, I forgot how fun it is x]

Bye!

XxX