Megalodon, which means "big teeth" in Greek. At present, paleontologists have found some palm-sized triangular tooth fossils and several megalodon spine fossils. It is found that the teeth of adult Megalodon sharks are generally 10- 16 cm long, and the longest is more than 18 cm, which is several times that of great white sharks. According to the size of its teeth, paleontologists magnified and calculated that this shark is about 20 meters long and weighs about 90 tons, and its wide mouth diameter can reach 2.8~3 meters.
The reason why Megalodon is called "prehistoric beast" is that besides its huge size, its teeth are very powerful. It is the creature with the strongest bite force found in the history of the earth at present. The maximum bite force is estimated to be about 20 tons, which means that Tyrannosaurus rex is vulnerable in front of it. Its teeth bite harder than Tyrannosaurus rex, and it can easily crush the ribs of whales.
Paleontologists found that Megalodon lived from 6.5438+0.5 million years ago to 2.6 million years ago. It is a prehistoric behemoth standing at the top of the biological end, and is praised by paleontologists as the strongest and largest creature in the history of the earth. Megalodon had no natural enemies at that time, and liked to hunt whales best. Other marine mammals were also its dish. However, such a prehistoric behemoth without natural enemies was finally extinct. The reason for the extinction of Megalodon, a prehistoric behemoth, has always been a mystery. Experts have given three kinds of guesses about the extinction of Megalodon through research.
One starved to death. In fact, there is no extinction without natural enemies, which is a wrong logic. Although the prehistoric behemoth Megalodon stands at the top of the food chain and has no natural enemies, it is extremely ferocious, does not understand the balance of the food chain, only knows about slaughter, and it is very easy to destroy the stability of the food chain. The end result was that the food chain was destroyed, and Megalodon had no food to catch, and finally starved to death.
Second, he died of lack of oxygen. According to research, the larger the organism, the greater the demand for oxygen. Experts speculate that the earth may have changed dramatically later, resulting in a decrease in oxygen in the air, which could not meet the breathing of Megalodon. Finally, Megalodon died of hypoxia and suffocation.
Third, it froze to death. Paleontologists have found some skeleton fossils of Megalodon sharks in subtropical waters, indicating that they are heat-loving creatures. In the long history, the earth has experienced several ice ages. Experts speculate that it may be that the sea water became cold, and Megalodon, who likes heat, was frozen to death alive because of the low temperature.