Megalodon - Predator Of Predators

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Megalodon is an extinct species of shark that ruled earth's oceans approximately 28 to 1.5 million years ago. Megalodon is considered as one of the biggest and most deadly marine predators in the history of our Planet. Fossil remains suggest that this giant shark reached a maximum length of 15.9–20.3 metres (52–67 ft), and also confirm that its habitats ranged across the world.

Megalodon had the most powerful bite of any creature that ever lived. whereas a modern Great White Shark chomps with about 1.8 tons of force (and a lion with a wimpy 600 pounds or so), Megalodon chowed down on its prey with a force of between 10.8 and 18.2 tons, enough to crush the skull of a prehistoric whale as easily as a grape.

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Although the bigger-than-Megalodon blue whale is technically a carnivore, it feeds mostly on tiny krill. Megalodon had a diet more befitting an apex predator, feasting on the prehistoric whales that swam the earth's oceans during the Pliocene and Miocene epochs, but also chowing down on dolphins, squids, fish, and even giant turtles (whose shells, as tough as they were, couldn't hold up against 10 tons of biting force). Megalodon may even have attacked the giant whale Leviathan.

So Megalodon was huge, relentless, and the apex predator of the Pliocene and Miocene epochs. What went wrong? Well, there's no lack of theories: Megalodon may have been doomed by global cooling (which culminated in the last Ice Age), or by the gradual disappearance of the giant whales that constituted the bulk of its diet. By the way, some people think Megalodons still lurk in the ocean's depths, but there's absolutely no evidence to support this.

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