Shark Week: Megalodon

Greetings everybody, Enjoying shark week?! How did you find the opening of shark week on Discovery Channel? We’re referring to the fake Megalodon documentary! Disappointing “documentaries” are being aired on discovery channel leaving many viewers including us speechless. A channel that was highly respected as an educational channel has now become something like SyFy channel. In complete agreement with Will Wheaton as to Discovery Channel owing its viewers an apology.

''Sharks are fascinating, and megalodon was an absolutely incredible creature! Discovery had a chance to get its audience thinking about what the oceans were like when megalodon roamed and hunted in them. It had a chance to even show what could possibly happen if there were something that large and predatory in the ocean today … but Discovery Channel did not do that. In a cynical ploy for ratings, the network deliberately lied to its audience and presented fiction as fact. Discovery Channel betrayed its audience." 

Read his full article here.

But don’t you worry #BioBunch is here for the rescue. We hope you liked our previous post about events that changed the public's perception towards sharks and here’s a post about Megalodon. Enjoy!

Source.  A Megalodon adult shark could have grown over 60 feet and weighed as much as 100 tons which made it an apex predator.

Megalodon (Carcharodon Megalodon) meaning big tooth in Greek is an extinct species of shark that wandered the seas and oceans 28-1.5 million years ago. It was given its name as its teeth were about 7 inches long whereas the biggest teeth of a great white shark are only about three inches long. 

Source. Megalodon's tooth (black) with two great white shark teeth (white)

Megalodon lunched on giant prehistoric whales paralyzing them by biting their fins or damaging delicate organs. Using computer simulations a joint research team from Australia and the U.S determined Megalodon’s biting power. Megalodon’s biting force was equal to 10.8 to 18.2 tons (by comparison the extant cousins the great white sharks chomp with about 1.8 tons force, a Tyrannosaurus Rex chomped with 3.1 ton and a lion with a wimpy 600 pounds), thereby concluding that Megalodon had the most powerful bite of any creature that ever lived. 

The subject of Megalodon extinction still remains under examination and over the years many possible causes for its downturn have been proposed such as oceanic cooling and sea level drops, new competition and a decrease in food supply leading to death by starvation. 

However Michael Sorensen, executive producer of Shark Week said: "95% of the ocean unexplored, who really knows?”

What do you think? Do you think the monster still alive hidden in our unplumbed ocean? 

We'll leave you with a less time consuming and more factual documentary than the one on discovery channel.

#BioBunch.

Over and out.