An ancient creature is lurking in the ocean. It’s double the size of a T.rex. Its gigantic jaws could crush a car. And now, it’s on the hunt for you. Megalodon sharks haven’t existed for more than two million years. But today, we’re bringing these apex predators back to wreak some havoc. Now, some people believe megs never went extinct.
Instead, they’re hiding in the deepest depths of our oceans, the Mariana Trench. Well, if the Megalodons were still around, that would be the last place you’d find them. That’s because these prehistoric tyrants hated cold water. They preferred the warmer waters of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. They also loved to explore the coasts of Australia and California.
If these predators were around today, they might seriously ruin your beach vacation. But if they spotted you swimming in the ocean, they wouldn’t just attack right away. And this has to do with your size. Megalodon sharks were gigantic. At least 16 m (50 ft) in length. So they needed a lot of food. Scientists estimate megs ate about 1,200 kg (2,500 lb) of fish every day.
To hit their caloric intake goals, they even dined on sea mammals like whales and dolphins. So you, puny human, might not be worth their attention. Unless you were hanging out with a group of friends. Now that’s a worthier snack. The megalodon could devour you and your friends all in one bite. And let me tell you, these predators had gigantic sharp teeth.
Each one of the megalodon’s teeth was as big as your hand. And unlike us humans, megs kept producing new sets of teeth every week or two. In their lifetime, they’d go through up to 40,000 of them. You could find those all over the ocean. You could find some huge carcasses, too. But that wouldn’t happen all too often. Scientists think that megalodons had a lifespan of up to 100 years.
Even if humans weren’t on the megalodon’s menu, their enormous appetite would hurt us in other ways. With the new predator in the oceans, there’d be barely any fish left for us. The fishing industry would experience big losses. And not because their boats wouldn’t catch anything. But because they would, and then megalodons would hunt them down, attack and eat everything in sight.
It’s not clear why megalodons disappeared those millions of years ago. It could be because the oceans got too cold for them. Well, now they’d be in for a treat. Because our oceans are warming up. Thanks, climate change. Megalodons would thrive and reproduce. You’d see more and more of these predators showing up.
They’d be disrupting our shipping operations and potentially bringing an end to the cruise industry. Eventually, they might die out once again after they ate whatever they could in the ocean and had nothing more to feed on. Or maybe, the rise in global temperatures would hurt us so much that we’d be the ones to go extinct.
