The oldest shark in the world - megalodon

Carcharodon megalodon or shark megalodon (photo below) is the world's oldest shark, which can be called a monster fish. Outwardly, it most likely was very similar to a large white shark. But its huge size will not leave anyone indifferent and hardly anyone will want to meet this terrible creation of nature.

Throughout the world, her teeth are found, which indicates the prevalence of shark megalodone in the past. Her teeth reach 15-18 cm, for comparison - the tooth of the largest modern shark has a length of 6 cm. According to the scientists, the ancient fish was up to 30 m long and could weigh 60-100 tons. Her jaw in width reached 2.7 m and in height - 2.1 m. And the basis of the diet were sperm whales and whales.

Of course, there is reason to assume that the shark megalodon occupied the top of the food chain in the open spaces of the ocean and kept the other inhabitants of the marine world in awe. It is believed that it reigned in the ocean waters 50 million years ago. This occurred in the late and middle Tertiary periods. But there are suggestions that the last megalodons died out to the standards of paleontologists quite "recently", just some 10 thousand years ago in the early Holocene or the late Pleistocene.

The shark megalodon has died out because of the cooling of the waters of the oceans, which has come quite sharply. Because of this, the cetaceans moved to cold, deeper waters in search of plankton. But under these conditions could not survive megalodon, a large shark needed coastal warm waters. Yes, and killer whales inflicted great damage to its population, the young sharks were for them a favorite object of hunting.

Cryptozoologists suggest that the shark megalodon could survive to our time. After all, on a geological scale, this monster died out quite recently. And if you take into account the fact that the ocean has been studied only by 10%, and many facts have been fixed that fish and mammals that have long been considered extinct have been found. For example, tselakant (kistepaya fish), according to scientists, died out 60 million years ago. However, in the last century it was found off the coast of Japan. A whale shark was discovered in 1828, a shark-goblin was found in 1897. And the big-tailed shark was discovered by chance only in 1976. And after that she was seen no more than 25 times. Maybe the shark of Megalodon is somewhere in the deep waters of the ocean?

In 1918, an ichthyologist from Australia David Stead investigated one incident. At that time he worked as a senior manager of one of the fishing enterprises. More than a week the fishermen did not go fishing for lobsters in the port of Stevenson. They flatly refused to go to the waters near the island of Bruton. They explained this by seeing a giant- sized shark . It was noticed by divers, who once again plunged into traps with lobster. They surfaced in horror to the surface to hide on the deck of the trawler. And the shark, meanwhile, slowly swallowed all the traps, and, together with the cables holding them on the bottom. And the weight of each container along with the lobsters was not less than 35 kg. Each catcher was questioned in detail, and they all claimed that the size of the monster was more than 30 meters. David Stead was sure that these fishermen could not be mistaken, because they knew the local whales and sharks very well. Their only means of subsistence was this work, and a week's simple, greatly reduced earnings, talked about a lot. Perhaps they really could not overcome the horror that seized them from a sudden encounter with such a giant as the megalodon shark.