Megalodon: Hit or Miss

Okay, firt of all, welcome to Scified, and mostly Jurassic Park 4. Second, MrHappy made a post about this too. And third, I do think it is legit.

I did make a post about it, check it out. I am pretty convinced, not 100% but pretty convinced.

Welcome! I do believe it is for the most part genuine. There is bound to be a huge undiscovered predator out there somewhere, lurking in the deep.

Welcome neoh,what I think about the Megalodon documentary well its AWESOME! like a prehistoric shark survived a 2 mass extinction and is still living today! COOL!

Welcome. I believe it's legit. Now, I'm not sure if it's a Megalodon, but there is certainly an unknown giant predator out there. It could be Megalodon. It might not be. But I feel the documentary was legit.

(if I were you, I wouldn't have asked it directly on JP4 discussions because... well we're all going to say yes... Dinosaur nuts i think most of us ended up watching it... LOL welcome to scified and JP4) Discovery ain't ever faked a program just for views, I do believe it was a megalodon they found, we've only explored fully 40% of this planet.... thats not even the entire land mass of earth... But as rex fan stated.... We might have a giant shark out there too thats not a megalodon.... (cough* not true *cough) but it might be possible.... The fact that it could dive to 6000 feet that fast, it lays down all the cards on the table... We haven't seen the extent of our oceans... I do believe it lives to this day, evolving to live at much lower sea level than before... We need to take care of the unknown before its lost to time again... We are not alone ladies and gentlemen... not alone...

I really hope this doesn't turn into something like Hell's Aquarium. I don't want to see a 100 foot Lioplurodon with gills.

I can see a Liopleurodon being almost, almost, that big. With gills? I don't think so. Reptiles do not grow gills, haha

Exactly, but it was in a book.

Forgot to mention, Welcome, to Jurassic Park..... 4 discussions. Anyway, that out the way, what could it be besides a Megalodon? Maybe something that evolved into Megalodon, but why mess with perfection?

Other large marine animals. Whales or another mammal. Other large sharks, perhaps Megalodon's cousins that are better adapted to deep water. Marine reptile possible. It's most likely a fish though. Mammals and reptiles have to surface for air and that would give them away.

Thats an interesting idea mr.happy, But I don't believe something can evolve into a previously extinct creature.... The largest shark is a great white, the largest great white was 18 feet long... Whales could be a possibility, But (not a marinebioligist or whatever) I think if any whale smelled the chum in the water, it would try and get away... the biggest fish to this day thats not a whale or shark is a prehistoric Coelacanth 2 meters long... (not taking into account some other speices of fish) even THEN its not big enough to knock over a cage like that meant to take on bloody tiger sharks... The fact that it happen at night... means that its even more plausible they do exist, They are intelligent enough to avoid us this long... Darkness could conceal the (i think it was 80 ft?) 80 foot long dinosaur....

Actually, the largest shark today is the whale shark. It's between 40 and 60 feet in length and weighs around 20-30 tons. But like it's name implies, it's harmless as a whale. A large filter feeder. The biggest predatory shark is the great white. Averaging 13-16 feet long and .5-1 ton, with the largest ones just under 20 feet long and 2 tons in weight. As far as whales go, remember, Orcas are large predatory animals. 20-30 feet in length and 4-7 tons. Sperm whales are also gigantic oceanic predators. The largest predator alive today in fact at 50-65 feet long and 45-55 tons or so. Neither Orcas nor Sperm whales are overly aggressive, but they may have an unknown relative that is. I'm just trying to say that, while Megalodon is a possibility, it's not the only possibility.

Well, its either a giant great white, megalodon, or some other unknown species. Whales don't attack whales, and the video from both the helicopter and the chilian video have it as a shark. You can tell that it was a shark from the copter because the tail was moving.

What I'm getting at is that we can't jump to conclusions. I acknowledge the fact that something is out there and it could be Megalodon. But I want to make sure everyone knows it could be something else. Delta- Remember, I'm getting at a new species of whale. Saying whales don't attack whales is frankly untrue. Orcas do it all the time and prehistoric whales like Brygmophyster did it too. There could be another, larger whale unknown to science and perhaps it too attacks and eats whales. Maybe it survived all these years by eating sperm whales and other deep water whales. There are many possibilities.

I meant something that Meg evolved into.

Rex Fan, it is a shark. Maybe not the one that attacked the whale decoy, but the one with the rescue copter was a shark. Whales don't wave their tails side to side. Also the one in chili was most likly a shark. Once again, sharks wave their tails side to side. It could be a new whale, or a new species of shark, but it could also be Megalodon. And how would we know if it isn't megalodon. We haven't found any shark that is its size before. No one has seen a Megalodon before, and all we have are teeth and the jaw. So unless scientists can find a difference in the jaw or tooth of these things, if it is a shark, then it is Megalodon. We just can't give it another name because nothing has been found like it.

Until there is undeniable PROOF that it is a Megalodon, we can not be sure that it's even a shark. As far as fossils go, the fossil record is so incomplete, that a tiny fraction of all animals fossilize. And since the only fossil remains of sharks tend to be the teeth and a few backbones, it's very difficult to say with any real certainty that Megalodon was the only predatory shark of that size. Like the fossil record, our understanding of the ocean and it's inhabitants is so full of holes, we can never say anything is one way or another until absolute proof is found.

Exactly, but we would have to call it something, and the closest thing that scientists would go to is Megalodon. Unless proof is found against it, it would probably be dubbed a Megalodon. You kind have made my point. The fossil record is so incomplete, that we really have no way of knowing, and that's why we have to make estimates, and the scientists would estimate, unless proven otherwise, that the shark is a megalodon.

Honestly, I don't think many scientist believe it's still out there. One thing I would like to know is, why haven't any dead whatever this thing is washed up on shore. I know it lives in deep water, but so does giant squid, yet they show up at least once and a while. A species can not live on for millions of years and not have all of the members of that species die at some point.

That is a good question. Sharks don't float to the surface when they die, so if it is really deep, then it would sink like a rock, and in a couple months to a year, it would have been eaten by underwater scavengers.

1 megladon did evolve in some terms, to smaller average day sharks, But look at humans for example, in evolutionary terms, we were giant apes once, theres still apes today... but there is also humans... 2 Do remember we did not know that giant squid lived until i think the 80s maybe? thats when the first actual sighting and stuff came in, they weren't confirmed as a species until 2000 ish... And even to today we know zip about them... My idea about not knowing their existence is, when they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean and since they're mostly cartilage, they would soon decompose with only their teeth left... I dunno about you, but they're teeth are kinda small compared to a laptop or computer... These would be very easy to lose as they sink into the sand... Also, it was very deep water they were "spotted" in SOOO I don't think many a persons been down there... We kinda have a lost world incident on our hands... (the book) Until we see one of them wash up on shore we aren't going to have full clarification of what's going on. If they're isolated in this sort of deep shelf, this makes it even HARDER for a corpse to wash up and shore and if it happens a rare occurrence... I bet, within the next 10 years, they will be classified as an ex extinct species, do remember... Great whites were not classified as great whites until sometime during the 20th century

All I'm going to say is that we must consider all the options. Megalodon is one of them. But it's not the only one and we can't say this unknown species is a Megalodon until we know for sure. All we can say is something large and predatory is swimming around in the deep ocean.

And it is attacking boats and whales. I feel so safe to get in the water.

That's something we can all agree on ;) Don't worry, when most people go swimming in the ocean, it's usually too shallow for something that big to get in. Hope that helps a little, haha

I'm just going to assume that it is bad to go out in my boat shaped like a whale, is bleeding bacon, and makes calls that son d like it is hurt. Oh, and swim it around the area where humpback whales are.

I think that would be a bad choice whether or not a giant unknown predator was swimming around ;)

That's crazy talk :)

The last thing I would want to do is get into the water with a sixty foot long megalodon which to me would be a hundred more times scarier than any great white. Based on what happened on discovery channel in that episode, I don't know of anything else that could have moved such a large decoy like that whale they made like that. A megalodon is the only one that comes to mind, but who knows, new creatures are being discovered everyday, especially ones that have been thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago (looks at the coelacanth fish).