Megalodon
| Megalodon Fossil range: Pliocene - Pleistocene |
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| Tooth, with Quarter for scale | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Carcharodon megalodon Agassiz, 1843 |
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The Megalodon, Carcharodon megalodon, was largest shark of all time. It lived from the late Oligocene to early Pleistocene epochs, 20 to 1.5 million years ago.
This giant of a shark was a huge version of the current great white shark. The word megalodon is a Greek word and means "big tooth". Megalodon had teeth, which are among the largest ever found, over 18 cm long. The are believed to be as long as 16 meters and weigh over 60 tons.
Megalodon hunted large and medium-sized whales, attacking the bony areas, such as chest or fins. This would stop the whale, or it could kill quickly with a fatal bite to the chest region. Megalodon could bite with the one of the strongest bites in the animal kingdom's history.
The skeleton of a Megalodon was made of cartilage, so it will be impossible to find complete remains of these animals. Megalodon teeth, however were bone and can be found in all oceans, which shows that the sharks were all over the world. Other remains found are vertebrae, but these are very unusual fossils.
