Megalodon: Does it Still Roam the Oceans?

this video is brought to you by foreo more about them later Hello everybody welcome back to another episode of decoding the unknown the show where one of my writers in this case Elsa thank you Wills has written me a script Megalodon is it really didn't they make a movie about Megalodon recently I feel like or recently like in the last few years I feel like I remember seeing adverts for that being like this would be great and then I never went to see it and probably forgot about it probably because it was a um is it really gone I don't know if this is one of those ones where it's like I mean probably but also the oceans are really big and people like James Cameron are always going down there in their little submarines and uh discovering new so maybe I don't know maybe one day I'm gonna open up the news in the morning and it's going to be James Cameron destroyed by a Megalodon and I mean God damn okay James Cameron just loves being underwater for some reason what's up with that guy let's jump in [Music] in the depths and darkness of the wild oceans it lurks cold and merciless it kills everything in its path devouring whales like a toddler devours cupcakes with a bite force six times stronger than a T-Rex I don't know is that is that a useful like point of comparison because I've never seen a T-Rex so it was it was many millions of years before the entire human species was around unless you believe in that uh six thousand year old Earth thing okay it's Jesus Christ you need to be decoded I've never seen a T-Rex bite anything exactly but that sounds really impressive it's the terror skulking behind the waves the bogey shark that'll Steal Away Little dolphins in Wales not listening to their parents and eating their veggies it's the monster roaming the Seas haunting our dreams it's the Megalodon shark close the beaches Chief Brody I've never seen Jaws but even I know that reference if that's not Jaws though that's going to be really embarrassing I'm pretty sure it is right that's Jaws hmm why have I not seen Jaws or maybe I've seen Jaws but when I was a kid not so fast while I appreciate a good monster story as much as the next guy before we grab our spear guns and hop on our speed boats is the Megalodon even real unlike many other Cryptids that we've looked at and hopefully we'll look at in the future the Megalodon was very real the monster existed so that mystery is decoded already the mystery we're interested in today is whether the shark is still around ending lives and hunting things so let's find out meet Meg as you probably guessed from the introduction the only shark movie that I ever saw is Jaws most people might be more familiar with the 2018 movie The Meg that's it it's now with Jason Statham this is the god Jason's hey Siri who starred in the movie The Meg from 2008. already like trying to tell me about my web results before I've even finished speaking hey Siri thank you [Music] says won't respond respond why can't we start using some of that chat GPT technology in Siri that'd be nice combine it with some voice recognition stuff boom maybe would have something actually useful smart space little book by Steve Allen about a Megalodon shark terrorizing people because apparently that's what sharks do based on the reviews I'm glad I missed it but like all monster movies it did a wonderful job of completely misrepresenting the Megalodon and sharks in general so let's start this script with meeting the actual Megalodon wait the Meg 2008 now I'm curious the Meg tell me it's starring Jason I'm such a big brain it is starring Jason Statham I that's a movie that I didn't see from five years ago it gets 42 on Rotten Tomatoes and 46 with the critics so the critics rated the Meg higher than audiences that's one of those movies where you're expecting it to be like critics four percent audience like 68 or something yeah I cool I'll enjoy that baby it's not as news as like you know I'm gonna enjoy this movie and I'm not gonna have to think very much about it whereas like some critics movies get very good reviews and then I like them but it's like I know I'm gonna have to think about it like what did that pig movie get Pig rotten that's gonna be like it's gonna be in the 90s on Rotten Tomatoes now honestly it's probably in the 90s with the audience as well because it's absolutely cracking 97 with the uh with the critics 84 with the audience so people still really liked it it's such a good movie if you haven't seen that you definitely should sharks are pretty amazing they appeared in the fossil record about 420 million years ago and they've been with us ever since the the Megalodon literally meaning giant tooth shark was the largest and most fearsome shark that ever roamed the oceans it lived around 23 to 2.6 million years ago and could be found off of every continent except Antarctica because there are some places even Megalodon wouldn't go truthfully the whale shark at 39 feet 12 meters might actually be the largest shark but since when do we let fact get in the way of a good story well there there is some truth in that yes all the time ills there is literally what this channel is about it's like oh there's a good story about a ghost in a house and then we come along with a fact that the person just you know their their stove was leaking carbon monoxide and they were seeing things and we shall over the interesting story with facts ilser is literally what we do yes Queen yes Queen yes Queen so just before we continue with the show today I did want to talk to you about a potential great idea gift idea for your significant other or maybe just a gift for yourself this is the bear from foreo vario a Swedish Tech brand and they've partnered with me on this video so they sent me this foreo bear and it's what you call a micro current device and basically it helps out with your skin care now I am the skeptical person um lots of sponsors approach me and I'm like all right yeah uh okay I need to look into this I'll look into the science I'll look into your research I'll go on Reddit and see what people are saying and then you gotta send me one I'm gonna use it for a while I use it for a month um and they were like at first they were like Simon can we do the ad already I'm like bro I just got it yesterday give me a month so I took a month and I used it and my skin looks better I am in my mid-30s now my wrinkles look less obvious maybe I don't know if you can you probably can't I don't know I don't have many wrinkles but it just it it worked which was um which was nice and look when you talk about the science it is clinically proven to increase skin firmness and elasticity as well as reduce wrinkles and fine lines and even improve skin pigmentation and during foreo's clinical trial 93 of users reported improvements in Fine Lines around the eyes this could be a great gift for a special person in your life or just for yourself like I said and it's more than just an anti-aging device it's great for people who want to have less visible pores or more defined facial features which is nice so click the link in the description below check out foreo and uh back to today's video sharks don't have bones their skeleton is mostly cartilage which doesn't fossilize so the only thing researchers really have to work with is the teeth using oh my God that's kind of creepy isn't it the only thing we have is just like Teeth everywhere and just like perfectly aligned shark mouth shape and you're like that belonged to a really big shark and we know nothing about its body what if it was just uh what if it just had a really huge mouth and a tiny body or what if it had a huge body in the mouth was Tiny like relatively wow what incredible thoughts you have Simon incredible thoughts you guys get that reference The Lonely Island yes I love this song that's that's so cool using the found teeth and the odd vertebrae researchers use modern sharks as a comparison to draw up the Megalodon spec sheet imagine reconstructing a giraffe using teeth and other Antelope existing at the in the same region for comparison odds are you not going to get a very accurate picture the idea we have a Megalodon today is based heavily on the great white shark both Megalodon and the Great White were apex predators holding the same place in the food chain and for a long time scientists consider the two sharks closely related however new research suggests that Megalodon and the great raw white actually co-existed so scientists now believe that the two were different species of sharks and not actually related at all Megalodon was the last of the mega tooth sharks with no living descendants so we'll probably never know what Megalodon really looked like everything we know about Megalodon other than it had really big teeth the biggest founder date measuring seven inches there's 18 oh my God I don't want that thing in the oceans I hope it's dead and has been dead for millions of years oh my and you know if a movie's got Jason Statham in it it's going to be a pretty badass shark because Jason Statham's gonna have to take it out and he's pretty hard everywhere so everything else we know about is an educated guess Megalodon always big we're talking about 33 to 60 feet that's at 10 to 18 meters for those outside of the U.S so Big Shot dude some scientists feel that the average Megalodon was probably only about 33 feet or 10 meters in size with bigger sharks being the exception rather than the rule While others feel the average size was probably closer to 50 feet or 15 meters your average great white for comparison only reaches between 11 and 16 feet that's 3.3 to 4.8 meters it was also quite fast considering its size tooth marks and teeth found in fossilized whale bones tell us this shark was an apex predator and probably aggressive at 50 tons it had to be in order to hunt enough food to stay alive the Megalodon's jaw could span between 8 and 11 feet 2.7 to 3.4 meters wide that's big enough to easily swallow two adults side by side why do we have to make that comparison this thing went extinct millions of years ago I don't want to think about it eating a family Jesus thankfully Megalodon's menu didn't include humans yeah we weren't around at all for like millions of years mostly because we weren't around yet the Sharks preferred whales seals sea cows Dolphins other sharks and turtles among other things most predatory sharks won't stick their noses up at Scavenging so while Megalodon was a hunter not a scavenger if the opportunity prevent presented itself I'm sure Meg made good use of it predatory sharks can also be cannibalistic so it's quite possible that older sharks occasionally snacked on juveniles and the strong pups munched down on their weaker siblings being an apex predator itself is also unlikely that Megalodon had any natural Predators I learned a really unpleasant fact the other day and I've been thinking about it I don't know why I've been thinking about it it's gonna make me sound like a right psycho but I always thought and I think it's just because I saw some movie back in the day the eating other humans gives you like brain disease like that Kuru prion brain disease or it just like does other things to you or it makes you like sick and then you die but apparently not apparently as long as long as you've not got that prion disease or whatever which is mostly kept in the brain anyway like eating people like if you've been in some crash or something I always thought well yeah we're gonna have to risk it by eating our the dead passengers who like frozen in the Andes or whatever but apparently it's fine and I can't believe I made it until like 30 35 years old just assuming that eating other people was like not just morally repugnant but it also made you sick and then you died and then I found out no no you could totally snack on other people delicious and I've been like my world has been shaken up by this I've been missing out I mean not really but it is did anyone else think that you'd get a disease by eating other people or was that just me and then I was it just like shook my worldview just can't believe we're not snacking on each other more being an apex predator itself is also unlikely that Megalodon had any natural Predators we're not sure what caused it sorry I know I don't gotta go on another tangent right now like you know when I've got like two kids and you know when they're young and they are young now you're teaching them like what sound does a cat make meow or like what is a cat you know they'll be like meow what is a dog a dog goes woof I taught my kid so whenever when someone asks it and what it's a tiger I should say a tiger is an apex she'll be an apex predator he's like what's a cat meow what's the dog wolf what's a tiger a tiger is an apex predator I don't know why I did this I just found it really funny like so when teachers ask and stuff uh she'll be like it's an apex predator just sounds super smart she has no idea what apex predator is of course but it just amuses me because I'm a simple man I am just smart I am just married it's the Marty I mean s-m-a-r-g so we're not sure what caused the Megalodons Extinction or the exact date the last Megalodon left this world for the shark afterlife but most researchers could go that it was toward the end of The Plight pliocene era when the planet faced a period of global cooling the continents of North and South America collided cutting off the Central American Seaway and withered The increased flow of War equatorial Waters that was possible while the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans were connected for the Megalodon that was adapted to Tropical and subtropical Waters this was very bad news the cooling oceans led to a major loss of habitat for the shark and dropping sea levels meant Megalodon nurseries on the coasts were lost exposing vulnerable pups to other hungry Predators oh no they were victims of climate change for real the global currents also changed and the temperature of the oceans dropped dramatically which had a major impact on ocean life in general researchers believe that up to a third of the ocean mammals went extinct along with 43 percent of turtles and 35 percent of seabirds in the time of Megalodon there was an estimated 20 different Genera of Wales whereas today we only have six it's possible that much of the prey Megalodon relied on to support its immense size either went extinct or migrated to colder Waters oh where Meg couldn't follow yeah I'd be like if I if I it's like I could handle this it's slightly colder over there and there's no super Predators I'm just gonna deal with the cold it'd be like do you want to stay in the warm house where there is a tiger or do you want to live in the shed where there is no tiger I'd be like shed I'll stay in the shed thank you auster it's cold it's cold but there's no tiger we really didn't need that analogy I just I just liked it on top of dwindling food sources it speculated that the Megalodon also had to compete with other existing Predators like the Leviathan whale and new emerging Predators like the great white shark as well as aggressive sperm whales that are now extinct and the Orca or killer whale for what was left the killer whales are highly intelligent and social Hunters hunting in groups or pods a juvenile Megalodon would have been no match for a pot of hungry killer whales the killer sperm whale was one killer sperm I'm a child uh I was warm-blooded and could follow the prey wherever it went it also hunted in groups whereas Megalodon was most likely a solitary Hunter with the great white and orca being smaller and needing less food than Megs their chances of surviving a food shortage were considerably better in the end Megalodon's huge size and dietary needs were its biggest disadvantage Megalodon might have been able to fight off Extinction had it been faced with only one obstacle but the combination of a cooling ocean Fierce competition with the competition occasionally munching on Megalodon's pups chomping down on each other and prey going extincter migrating into colder Waters finally led the last Meg meeting the shark Gods ending the line of mega tooth sharks or is that simply what they want you to believe oh now we get into the mystery Megalodon still exists over the last century sightings of gigantic Starks have been reported all over the world yeah so of ghosts it doesn't make them any more real since we have no idea what Meg actually looked like many cryptozoologists and megalodon groupies firmly believe that these sightings are proof that the mighty Megalodon is not as extinct as scientists would have us believe many of these sightings like the video of the Megalodon in the Mariana Trench have been debunked so I'm only going to look at a few sightings that aren't as easily explained the David stead sighting in 1980 an Australian naturalist David stead recorded the tale of a group of local fishermen at Port Stephens Australia for several days the fishermen refused to return to their fishing grounds and brought an island what they had encountered out their frightened them so much that they were willing to give up their only source of income to stay out of its way stead and Mr Patton that local Fisheries inspector interviewed the men and heard the following tale while fishing for crayfish off of Broughton Island in deep Waters the fishermen encountered an enormous shark the shark went from crayfish pot to crayfish pot filled with catch and chomped it down Mooring lines and all the pots were about three feet six inches in diameter that's around one meter and contained two to three dozen decently sized crayfish weighing several pounds each whoa crayfish are huge is it in a crayfish like that weird crab-like thing so big wow these were experienced fishermen well acquainted with the Seas and its inhabitants Salty Sea Dogs and they all agreed that they'd never seen anything like it they were also firm that it wasn't a whale it was a shark size estimates differed from one Storyteller to the next Ranger from 115 feet that's 35 meters to 300 feet that's 90 meters long which seemed a little absurd even to stead the men claimed that the water seemed to boil whenever sharks went past or surfaced and the shark had a ghostly white color this is kind of intense it's got to be a whale right like bubbling water coming off of its uh spouty thing at the top but they were swearing is not a whale maybe it was just a mutant whale maybe it was a whale with like birth defects or something so did all fishermen have an encounter with the suddenly not so extinct Megalodon both stead and patton agreed that the men saw something and I'm also inclined to believe that they did yeah why would they make it up and then they're making up such a story that harms them because they're not going out to get more crayfish whilstead didn't think the shark was nearly as large as the fisherman claimed he considered the possibility of it being a Megalodon since he held a PhD in biology and the shark spotted was never identified Megalodon Believers cite this as proof that Meg is still around or at least it was in 1918. I would say that it's proof that it's still around it's proof that there's some weird ass big shark-like creature out there that doesn't necessarily mean it's Megalodon in fact I say it's highly likely that it's a whole brand new species if it's anything because Megalodon was also like millions of years ago and never since I mean maybe but couldn't it also just be like a new Mega Shark same Gray's tale Zane gray was a well-known novelist of westerns and a deep sea angler who had a Megalodon tail of his own in his book Tales of Tahitian Waters published in 1931 radar already got problems with this one because this guy's a writer he's by himself he's going on an adventure that he's going to write about later and he's going to sell that Adventure book and make some money he is already like the fishermen were disincentivized because they would lose money because they were afraid of the big shock this guy is making money from it maybe those fishermen also made a little money on the side by telling their story but there's no indication of that but Zayn he's gonna make some money uh the book was published in 1931 and gray describes his encounter with a gigantic shark in 1927 or 1928 while sailing off the coast of the French Polynesian island of rangueroa gray was an experienced angler but claimed that he wasn't able to identify the large shark much longer than his 30 to 40 foot 9 to 12 meter fishing boat he described the shark as yellow and green with a square head immense pectoral fins and white spots what was the monster but according to gray he encountered the mighty Megalodon and Zayn wasn't the only gray to have an encounter Gray's son Lauren also claimed to have seen a gigantic shark around 100 miles Northwest of orangaroa while the while on board the SS manganoi with his father when exactly this happened is a bit unclear some sources claim Lauren saw his shark two days after his father saw a Shark while other sources state that Lauren saw the shark in 1930 E3 well that's a bit different it's like either a few days or six years either way estimated the shark to be 40 to 59 feet that's 12 to 18 meters long yellowish with white flecks and massive head some 10 to 12 feet around 3 meters across and a large brown tail if that sounds like a whale shark to you you're not the only one Lauren Gray insisted that the monster wasn't a whale shark though but experts disagree experts also consider Zane Gray's sighting to be a whale shark or exceptionally large tiger shark but I mean what are those experts know right right no wrong um it was just this tiger shark a whale shark or whatever oh so that was probably like the David's dead sighting the one from before like maybe it wasn't as big as they said and maybe it was one of these other creatures because Megalodon it's been extinct for so long and I'm not saying it can't be like undiscovered Megalodon size creatures out there I'd say they probably are didn't they recently discovered that giant squids are real or something like that I feel like that was a thing um so yeah obviously there's like we haven't discovered yet a shark eat shark World a research team in Australia tagging great white sharks came across one of their trackers washed up on a beach around four months after tagging a shark when they looked at the data they made a surprising discovery the recorded data showed a sudden rise in temperature and then had dropped to 1900 feet 580 meters great whites can dive that deep but it's not their usual stomping grounds the only reasonable explanation the researchers could come up with was that their tagged shark had been eaten by something and the tracking device had been in the digestive tractor of whatever ate the great white of course the immediate conclusion of all Megalodon groupies was that this was irrefutable proof that a Megalodon had eaten a great white could a big ass whale eat a great white or um some other big mysterious sea creature in another incident julil nayafov spotted a 15-foot 4.5 meter scarred Great Wide while diving off Isle of Guadalupe in Mexico the bite mark on the shark side was enormous of course the only thing big enough to buy to read a great white shark is Megalodon right well no not quite according to scientists it's not uncommon for Great Whites to bite or even eat each other alternatively orcas are known predators of great whites there we go I knew there's going to be some like great whites they are like an apex predator right but a big ass whale could eat that like we're an apex predator but a tiger could eat Us in 2022 Drone footage taken off the coast of Mossel Bay South Africa caught a pod of killer whales hunting and killing a great white shark of course social media is full of experts we all agree that these incidents were the work of Megalodon since there's no definitive proof that another great white was involved I suppose they have a point but I'm not entirely convinced the black demon of Cortez this shark is a Cryptid that actually deserves its own decoding episode so I'm only going to touch on it very briefly apparently a massive black shark has been seen off Mexico's Baja Coast for years Eric Maca fisherman reported that he had had a run-in with the black demon when the demon rocked his boat its tail sticking at least five feet out of the water there are other explanations for this shark other than Megalodon it could be a whale shark or a great white shark with malinism is that the thing that okay that's like the opposite of albinoism or something so it makes it dark but many Believers stand firm the black demon of Cortez is none other than the mighty Megalodon there are plenty more sightings in the 1960s the captain of a 55 foot 16 meter fishing boat reported seeing a shark at least as long as his boat while at anchor for repairs off of Australia's Great Barrier Reef in 2012 the Brazilian Coast Guard caught footage of a really huge shark passing underneath them while on a rescue operation understandably everyone was a bit preoccupied at the time they were busy saving lives after all so they only saw the shark when reviewing the footage later if the sightings don't convince you fear not Megalodon Believers have more proof however if you believe in Megalodon get ready for disappointment or like this video now go have a nice cup of tea firm and you'll believe that Megalodon is still roaming the Seven Seas so look what other arguments do we have in The Not So extinct fish the idea of a once extinct animal suddenly being found is not without precedence it's typo as president it's not without presidents where it is technically without president it's happened once before every time encrypted is mentioned the rediscovery of this fish is presented as proof that extinct animals could still exist they're just hiding so let's deal with the coelacanth in the room oh my God thank you for that pronunciation guide otherwise I'll be like Cola cancer according to the fossil record the coelacanth went extinct around 75 sorry 65 million years ago imagine everyone's surprise when a living coelacanth was caught off the coast of South Africa on December 23 1938 by local fishermen yeah I mean to be fair I'm kind of shingle over it so far but I'm mostly just over the specific examples of not being like concrete enough but I'm not against this thing existing like the ocean is massive and deep we don't understand much about it James Cameron's out there doing the Lord's work I'm sorry to all I like the uh marine biologists or whatever I know you're the ones actually doing it James Cameron's just like dive for Titanic or whatever he wants but I'm sorry I'm sorry you're the best story marine biologist I feel is one of those jobs like when you're a kid I'm not sure why it would be like what do you want to be when you grow up it'd be like an astronaut a movie star marine biologist why why is that one so high up there don't you just have to go and spend like is that something that is actually a thing or have I just like misremembered that for some bizarre reason but aren't you just gonna have to go and study biology and then spend an awful lot of time on a boat getting really seasick and cold and underwater it sounds miserable you're probably not going to be on a tropical island picking up like those big shells off the sea floor and like prying them open with a big knife and looking for oysters or whatever oysters um pearls or whatever that's that's also power diving I guess not really that just let's just move on it's supposedly extinct fish was spotted by a museum Creator Marjorie Courtney Latimer who sent drawings of the fish to Rhodes University theologist maybe jlb Smith who made the positive identification another specimen was caught in 1952 off the comoros islands local fishermen were probably aware of the sea lacanth existence long before a biologist showed up to declare the fish no longer extinct however not being experts in the field of extinct fish they just didn't realize the significance of their lunch a fully grown coelacans can reach up to 6.6 feet that's 2 meters so it's not small it's definitely not small it's pretty pretty big however their habitat is limited to a very specific location mostly around the comoros islands with a few specimens spotted along the east coast of Africa and off Indonesia on top of that they spend their days hiding out in caves only coming out to feed at night so they're easy to miss while they're generally slow moving they can move quickly should the Niza rat need a rice lazy I only run when I am forced to run to get a snack so the argument goes if coelacanth could hide in the oceans for millions of years why not the Megalodon the oceans are vast and we've only explored a very small part of them this is true however the coelacanth is a two meter long fish hiding in caves the Megalodon is a 15 meter long aggressive Predator that's not hiding in caves I'll leave it to you to spot the floor on this logic there is some logic there I know the Megalodon is really big and it's aggressive and all of that stuff but the oceans are really big and two meters is not that different from 15 meters when you compare it to the size of the ocean and caves are generally like on shores you know they have to be like people are much more likely to be near caves than they are to be in the middle of the ocean or the depths of the ocean I think there is some logic there real sir and normally you're the one who's a bit more like uh oh Simon come on have a little belief in this come on come on today I'm kind of I'm on the other side I'm like maybe this is hanging out there in the depths Discovery the new species as I've said before and probably will say again we've only explored a very small part of our oceans yet we just said that a minute literally a minute ago the sea floor has been mapped using satellite and sonar but that doesn't tell us much about the denizens of the deep ocean which means that occasionally we discover new species the mega mouth shark holy was only just that sounds terrifying it was only discovered in 1976 by a U.S Navy ship off of Hawaii that aged at 15 feet 4.5 meters it's pretty big however Megamouth evaded noticed for many years because it lives in very deep Waters feeding off a plankton and only comes to the surface at night since it doesn't hunt there won't be carcasses washing up on beaches with bite marks out of them to act as proof of megamouth's existence instead it lives away from the coastline so the chances of people running into a mega mouth shark are slim Megalodon pups lived near the coastline okay there we go that's uh that's a bit of a that's not good for our argument about Megalodon existing and the remains of Megalodon meals probably washed up on beaches unlike Megamouth there would be proof of of Meg and let's not forget the squids the giant squid can reach up to 30 feet that's 9 meters in length and lives in the deepest parts of the ocean okay cool I knew that I felt like this was discovered I don't know if it's discovered recently maybe I imagine that while bodies of the squid have been washing up on beaches and squid have been leaving scars on whales for many many years the first living giant squid was only caught on film in 2014. sorry 2004. okay that was a while ago it's been a while but nearly 20 years but still that's relatively recent in like the whole term of discovering species the colossal squid because giant was already taken is even bigger than the giant squid what we gonna call the next one Ultra colossal actually probably that does sound quite scientific doesn't it and was only discovered in 1925 hopefully we don't discover another one because we're running out of words for really big Elsa and I hitting on the same jokes today yeah I know it's not so good it was a listening experience but I kind of enjoy it it's like being in sync despite knowing about this considerable portion of calamari for decades calamari the fried squid I I love Seafood I I anything like seafood my wife hates it she's like I can't eat that it's too weird it's too weird I don't like eating it like I come from a island where you know when I was young my parents have like a house on the beach and there was this like a harbor where all the fishing boats would come in and they sell all these little Seafood in like little cups and stuff so I like grew up eating all sorts of like weird stuffings and oysters and stuff there was an oyster like uh place where they bring all the oysters in and there's an oyster restaurant it was all this weird my whole life so I just got used to it and I love it and my wife like comes from uh Czech Republic it's like landlocked there's no seafood and she's like this is too weird and it's always disappointing because I'd love to eat more Seafood I'll eat calamari any chance I get that was a fascinating Tangerine Simon thank you so much while the squid aren't exactly abundant and they were only accepted scientifically in the 1900s there were still ample proof of their existence sightings of these beasts probably gave rise to the many stories of the Kraken Kraken Kraken I feel like it's one of those words where people were like in the description in the description in the comments being like Simon doesn't know how to pronounce kraken or crack it or cracking Simon doesn't care I probably nailed it there right at least one of those has got to be correct giant squid tentacles were found washed up on beaches their beaks were found in the stomachs of the Predators that fared on them and there are records of squid beaching in places like Newfoundland and New Zealand since the 19th century however there is a big difference between squid and megalodon squid are not apex predators they're Ambush Predators with a very low metabolism so they don't need much food to survive unlike Megalodon which was an apex predator and needed lots of food call me a skeptic but I don't think the discovery of a new species is a very solid argument for the existence of Megalodon however finding new species is always very exciting so I look forward to see what new Critters the ocean Gods can come up with next yeah was James Cameron gonna find did Megalodon evolve to live in the Mariana Trench a video of a supposed Megalodon in the Mariana Trench went viral in 2016. the footage shows a gigantic shark at least 50 feet 15 meters long swimming over an abandoned shark cage however this was proven to be a hoax the footage is not from the Mariana Trench the video that went viral in 2016 was in fact filmed in 2008 in saruga Bay off the coast of Japan the supposed diving cages and Diving cage and the Megalodon is not a 50-foot monster but a Pacific sleeper shark however the video did raise an interesting question is it possible that Megalodon evolved to survive in the deepest parts of the ocean many Megalodon groupies firmly believe this to be the case so let's explore this theory in a bit more depth the Mariana Trench is a canyon in the Earth's crust running for about 1 500 miles that's 2400 kilometers but it's only about 40 miles or 64k across it's in the Western Pacific and is the deepest part of the ocean so many reasons that it would be the perfect place for a really big shark to hide challenge a deep the deepest spot in the trench is over 35 000 feet that's 10 600 meters deep that is so deep they so that's like the height of a plane like when you're on a passenger plane that's how high it flies but underwater that's so crazy it's so deep that's around 6 000 foot deeper than Mount Everest is tall the temperatures in the trench are around 2 degrees Celsius that's 35.6 Fahrenheit and the pressure is a thousand times more than what it is at sea level human have only managed to travel to the bottom of Challenger Deep twice and the landscape is inhospitable to say the least in order for Megalodon to adapt to life in the deepest darkest parts of the ocean it would have had to undergo quite the transformation to date no sharks have been discovered living in the Mariana Trench the Greenland shark Dives as deep as 7200 feet that's 2 200 meters and the Pacific Sea Bashar can dive to 6600 feet that's two thousand meters however no sharks live below the 10 000 foot or three thousand meter Mark the pressure a will simply crush them and three thousand meters is always off how deep was it ten thousand six hundred meters yeah yeah it's inside what four times deeper however let's say Megalodon managed to evolve pieselites essentially a molecule deep water dwelling creatures have that prevents the rest of their molecules from being crushed by the pressure what I had no idea it would still need food most of the creatures living in the trench are small adapted to survive on limited food sources and there are just not that many of them the deeper you go the less populated it is deep sea sharks also tend to be very slow and sluggish so unlikely to hunt the amount of food Megalodon would need creatures living in the Deep oceans are often scavengers eating the decaying remains of the animals and plants that sink to the bottom this is not the diet of an apex predator a shark that used to eat whales is unlikely to survive off the diet of sea cucumbers finally if Megalodon adapted and has been playing the longest game of Hide and Seek in history there would still be proof in the fossil record a predator like Megalodon wouldn't simply pack its toothbrushes and other shark accessories and move on down to the deeps it would have to evolve some adaptations might include an expandable stomach to store food for longer periods of time pisolites prevent them being crushed and bioluminescence or really big eyes so they could see down there among other things this means transitional fossils showing this Evolution however none of them have been found on top of that unless Megalodon did evolve to eat plankton or small fish it would hunt which means signs of predation in other words we'd be finding whale carcasses with really big holes in them and whale bones with really big teeth in them while this theory is highly unlikely it does raise another point if Megalodon managed to evolve into a very deep sea shark eating cucumbers with Krill dressing dreaming of days its predecessors were hunting big juicy whales would it still be a Megalodon shark perhaps there's an unknown shark cruising around the Mariana Trench waiting to be discovered but I'm pretty sure it's not our friend Meg yeah it would evolved evolved into something different it would be completely like you can't be it would have Giant Eyes in bioluminescence the same is clearly different it would I don't know what how scientists classify things like on the evolutionary path but obviously it happens that homo sapiens came around at some point Didn't we you weren't around forever there was we didn't and just didn't magic out of nowhere how do we know Megalodon isn't around anymore honestly anyone who's been paying attention so far should be able to answer this one yeah we just said like there's no evolution in the fossil record there's no whales washing up with like shark bites in them that kind of stuff but there are some Die Hard Believers out there and since crushing the dreams of the innocent is what we do on this channel let me deliver the Sledge Hollow blow where are the teeth from the 16th to the 18th centuries Megalodon teeth thought to be petrified snake tongues okay and known as Saint Paul's tongue we used just charms to ward off evil dipped in drinks suspected of being poisoned and used as medicine and our fascination with these large teeth is still going strong we're dipping it in boys and drinks What's it gonna do like react to it there's very lucrative trade among shark teeth collectors looking for that elusive perfect Megalodon tooth you see sharks lose teeth just like my cats shed fur some estimates range between twenty thousand to forty thousand teeth in a single life some estimates range between 20 to 40 000 teeth in a lifetime if Megalodon was still around we'd be finding fresh teeth yet every single Megalodon tooth found is over two million years old and before you say it Megalodon teeth are distinctive they don't look like great white teeth and they are big someone looking for shark teeth is not going to miss a Megalodon tooth in 1873 HMS Challenger a research vessel dredged up two Megalodon teeth from a depth of 14 000 feet that's 4 200 meters near Tahiti in the South Pacific in 1959 Dr W shanetsky of London's Queen Mary College dated the teeth by studying the build up of the manganese dioxide layer on each tooth brain based on the dioxide deposition shineski concluded that the teeth were eleven thousand and twenty four thousand years old respectively this would suggest that Megalodon only went extinct far more recently than science assumes extinct as far as I'm concerned but many a Megalodon believer use this story as proof of Megalodon's existence so maybe they know something that I don't however manganese dioxide dating especially on shark teeth is considered unreliable as shark teeth can withstand more erosion due to being far more durable than your typical fossil a study in 1998 showed that the mineral crust of the manganese deposit dioxide preserved the teeth and reduce the decomposition rate which is why the teeth appeared whiter and fresher than most Megalodon teeth as for why the teeth were found in sediment dating to around 10 000 years ago when Megalodon was well and truly gone it's an example of reworking the teeth eroded out of the original Rock and were preserved in a newer Rock so know the teeth found by HMS Challenger don't prove of Meg it would be really compelling before you knew like the more modern up-to-date science though wasn't it it makes me wonder about what we're getting wrong today that will just be proof it's going to be a lot of stuff it's going to be so much stuff a limited menu Megalodon also wouldn't need to be living in the deepest parts of the ocean to struggle with finding food the lack of prey was one of the reasons Megalodon went extinct in the first place the decline in whale diversity due to global climate change meant less food and that hasn't changed even if Meg adapted to a diet that includes more dolphins and seals they'd still be eating whale and if dead things with big holes in them started showing up we'd know about it apex predators also control animal populations so if Megalodon was still hunting in the oceans our ecosystem would look very different without Megalodon munching away on them among other evolutionary factors whales have got a much larger in body size than their predecessors however there are far fewer of them than there were in Megalodon's day lastly the spot of top predator that once belonged to Megalodon today belongs to the Great White and the Orca there simply isn't room at the top of the food chain or enough food in the oceans for poor old Meg anymore why haven't we seen it this might be the biggest argument against the continued existence of Meg Megalodon wasn't wrath or elusive it was everywhere who was still alive oh he would have seen it by now juvenile Megalodon lived in coastal nurseries close to shore some of these nurseries have been discovered off the coast of Panama Maryland Florida and the Canary Islands staying in the shallower waters close to the shore proved provided the Megalodon pup with abundant Food Supplies while protecting it from larger Predators hunting in the deeper waters it's theorized that the pups were at least two meters at Birth already Jesus so not a baby I'd mess with oddly shallow coastal regions are also quite popular with people probably because oh we can't breathe underwater like the like our Atlantean kin if Megalodon was still using nurseries I find it unlikely that shark researchers oh would have found mega mega mouth but not Megalodon Junior on top of that human beings are keeping a close eye on whales and sharks well we're watching tours shark diving and killing sharks they're all very lucrative business opportunities if there was a big shark snacking on whales someone on a whale watching tour would be scarred for life by now and Engineers would have had to come up with much stronger shark diving cages shark meat is considered a delicacy and a pound of maker shark goes around 30 these days a fully grown Megalodon would break in millions sadly really how's that it's not that big sadly over 100 million of these sharks are being killed every year for trophy hunting for shark fin soup in reaction to shark attacks and due to sharks getting caught in trawler Nets built of having a shark the size of Megalodon escaping the senseless Slaughter seem highly unlikely and then we have that one pesky little detail that always trips up cryptozoologists as oh we saw in the case of the Loch Ness monster and the black cats in England you can't just have one Megalodon if Megalodon had been hiding in the oceans for the last 2.6 million years you'd need more than one a single shark cannot be millions of years old you would need big Megalodon sharks to make little Megalodon sharks to ensure a sustainable population they were going extinct to that population would be smaller but the primary way big marine animals go extinct these days is through hunting and megalodon has not been showing up in anyone's Nets it's a conspiracy would it be a decoding the unknown episode if there wasn't some conspiracy there are people who believe that scientists know Megalodon is still alive for some reason the government is covering up the existence of the mighty Meg this is just profoundly ridiculous like I don't know I started with a pretty open mind and then the the thing that cracks it for me is the nursery thing like they're not near the shores and the fact that there's no uh evidence of them hunting or hurting bigger whales and stuff like this so no I don't think it's real I think we've thoroughly debunked this it's not real it's fake okay but then to be like the government's covering it up is just absurd it's look I get it the government does shady all the time but you've always got to ask why the government usually has a good reason for it why do they spy on everyone because some people are terrorists why do they do this why there's always a reason there's always a why the hair is like why why why we're probably gonna get away and I'm probably gonna think it's nonsense while I'm sure the government has lots of things to hide I'm not sure how hiding the existence of the Megalodon shark benefits the government exactly the existence of a shark has no political or financial implications that I can see unless someone is trying to attach freaking laser beams to shark's heads as besides any scientists that can prove the existence of Megalodon without a doubt would be considered a superstar in the world of science the biologists do rediscovered the keyless cancer whatever the pronunciation was I don't remember didn't keep it to themselves nor were they ridiculed in the scientific Community since they could prove without a doubt that this had been rediscovered rediscovering the Megalodon would mean Fame and possibly Fortune so no one would cover up a find like that why do people believe Megalodon is real for some reason Humanity isn't happy you just simply live in Terror of monsters that exist you counter criminals for more details that's another shall I do check it out so we like to invent some as well throughout history the carcasses of unidentified creatures washing up on beaches fueled stories of sea monsters roaming the Deep science has gone a long way so we know sea serpents aren't real this means a new monster and that monster is Megalodon of course the Discovery Channel didn't help fake documentaries probably the biggest culprit in making people believe Tales of Megalodon is the Discovery Channel and their fake documentaries Discovery Channel what are you doing I remember you from being a kid you had good stuff don't do the History Channel thing where it's such as nonsense and Ancient Aliens megal is on the monster shark lives in its sequel Megalodon the New Evidence Drew almost 4.3 million viewers but it was all fiction it follows a marine biologist's investigation following The Disappearance of a fishing boat and other sightings and incidents alluding to the existence of a really big shark off the coast of Cape Town however the fishing boat never disappeared it was completely fabricated the photo of a whale with its tail Bitten are found on a beach in Hawaii was CGI and all the scientists who supposed Witnesses were paid actors the documentary doesn't actually find Megalodon because it's not real but it strongly implies that Megalodon is still very much alive and swimming there was a very vague disclaimer that it wasn't a real documentary that most people either missed or misunderstood but I think that was the intent really isn't this just a fun prank were you really trying to pass this off as something real that's so cringy Discovery Channel come on [Music] the documentary was so bad that even cryptozoologists who believe in the existence of Megalodon were offended by the poor quality and misrepresentation of their field and Science in general in an attempt to get higher ratings the show claims there are only unproven theories of Megalodon's Extinction okay guys okay okay stop it definitively proving anything that happened that long ago is simply not possible we only have unproven theories about what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs in the woolly mammoth but you don't see them running around do you in a search for the truth our fake marine biologist discovers a photo proving the existence of a very big shark and the photo shows up repeatedly on Megalodon exists sight so let's just torpedo that since we're already trampling over everybody's Megalodon dreams the 1942 photo apparently taking off the coast of Cape Town shows a Nazi U-Boat with what appears to be a really big shark cruising next to it you could only see the dorsal fin and the tail in the background there is nothing to help you determine how close this shark is to the U-Boat which immediately makes it impossible to say how large the thing we're seeing is it's the perfect combination for click bait extinct shark and Nazis in one photo it'll probably be the thumbnail of this video won't aside from the fact that it somehow went unfound for 70 years there are a number of problems with this photo firstly no U-boats of this particular class were close to South African Waters at the time this photo was taken secondly the distance between the fins just a shark of around 64 feet in length that's larger than what scientists estimate for the Megalodon and another expert mentioned that the photo presented in the show is toned sepia which wasn't standard at the time a photo taken of a submarine from another submarine in the middle of the Atlantic where this photo was taken or would have been black and white George monbaio a columnist for the guardian oh pretty sure I've read his stuff that name is super familiar uh uncovered the original footage before the Photoshop munchkins got their grabby paws on it and lo and behold no shark misidentification other than intellectual fraud many megalodon sightings a plain misidentification eyewitness accounts can be problematic the combination of excitement and fear Owen coming across a really big shark could easily add a few feet sending an average great white into a mighty Megalodon on top of that it's difficult to estimate the size of anything out see on land you got other objects like trees or buildings for comparison but see there's nothing to use for reference to give you a true idea or how big something is or how far away it is especially if you're not an experienced sailor photographs can be misleading for the same reason not only will something in the open's ocean but often appear much larger than it really is they also have to contend with the distortions caused by moving water basking sharks and whale sharks are already very large to start with and the largest whale shark on record reached 61 feet that's 18.8 meters these guys are totally harmless but it's no surprise they get confused with Megalodon occasionally finally it's not easy to identify an animal that you're not familiar with decaying whale and basking shark carcasses washing up on shore often mistaken for under identified deep sea Critters in 1977 a Japanese fishing trawler dredged up an unidentified viable Creature from the depths a picture was duly taken before the carcass was thrown overboard many conspiracy theorists firmly believe that the zuyol Maru carcass as it became known was evidence of a surviving prehistoric Plies here saw and oh where there's one there's got to be more right however the scientific Community agrees that it was the decomposing carcass of a basking shark the Sharks lowered jaw and Dorsal fins had already rotted away so the remainder looked like some long-necked Marine reptile so so sorry it's not a sea monster after all conclusion fake documentaries and movies depicting sharks as evil monsters that kill anything they see without compassion is a gross misrepresentation of sharks as a whole there are around 470 different species of sharks and only about a dozen dangerous to humans 470 speed is a dozen too many though of the 470 species only three have been responsible for fatal attacks on humans these attacks usually occur when the shark mistakes humans for food and most people survive shark attacks and sharks don't eat humans they take one bite probably get the same expression I do when mistaking an olive for a grape spit it out to move on in fact sharks mostly avoid humans there are some reports of lions and tigers purposefully hunting humans upon learning that humans make easy prey but there's not a single report of a shark doing the same okay about 70 people are the victims of unprovoked shark attacks every year with only five or less of those attacks proving fatal what kind of surprised it was five I thought it would be less five fatal shark attacks a year seems I know it's incredibly low but it does seem like a lot doesn't it humans on the other hand are killing millions of sharks every year who's the apex predator now as for Megalodon it's a fascinating shark but it's gone it's not hiding in the Mariana Trench eating hapless scientists it's extinct mystery decoded perhaps one day science could bring it back but if you've watched any of the Jurassic Park movies you'll know that's a bad idea no it's too long it's too think too long in the past there's no DNA left shark survived the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs multiple ice ages and other natural disasters but now they're losing the battle humans seem to be the one disaster that might end up wiping out sharks for good so instead of obsessing over a shark that's long gone let's focus on saving the sharks that we now have they're not evil they're not monsters they're actually kind of cool and they could use our help yes nice note to end on their Elsa thank you everybody for being here I hope you enjoyed today's episode if you did Smash that like button make sure you subscribe and if you're listening as a podcast leave me a review or don't whatever you fancy to be honest thanks for listening foreign [Music]

Channel: Decoding the Unknown

Views: 518,130

Keywords: what if megalodon sharks were still here, megalodon’s size, megalodon shark, deepest spot, the most dangerous sharks, the most dangerous animals, huge sharks, prehistoric animals, shocking videos

Id: qcBRywocOWE

Length: 50min 27sec (3027 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023