Is The Blue Whale The Biggest Animal Ever
Hundreds of years ago, something peculiar happened…
People started findingdragon teethalong the creeks and the shores of oceans. Large, half-dozen-inch-longdragon teeth.
How could that exist possible? Well, today we know they were really finding teeth from megalodon (Otodus megalodon), the largest shark to e'er live.
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Just how impressive was megalodon? For starters, the shark may take been20 to 50X the size of today'southlargestgreat white sharks.And, no, that'southward not a typo. While the largest neat white sharks found today weigh most v,000 pounds…
'Conservative' estimates of megalodon'south size place its maximum size at 47,960 kg (105,733 lbs). Larger maximum size estimates identify megalodon's highest potential weight at 103,197 kg (227,510 lbs).
(Which, for perspective, a single megalodon was the weight of about ane,250 fully grown adults!)
Just this calendar week, brand-new research was published on megalodon.
The incredible conclusion?In that location's simply no other predatory shark that'southward comparable.
The largest other shark in megalodon's 'order' reached simply 7 meters (23 feet), just half megalodon's length anda fractioninformation technology weight. This led the authors of the study to declare megalodon had "off-the-scale gigantism."
Translation: at that place's simplyno sharkwe've e'er found fossil evidence of that compares to megalodon. Its's 10 times, 20 times, fifty-fifty 30X the mass of all other related sharks!
Withal, megalodon was far from the only ancient 'giant of the deep' that scientists have uncovered. Below, yous'll find 5 different giants of the sea that sometimes could be even larger (and potentially even more than mortiferous predators)than megalodon itself!
Megalodon vs.Mosasaurus
In the Cretaceous period (145.5 to 65.5 million years agone), a species of butmassiveaquatic lizards roamed the earth's waterways.
The genus Mosasaurus was a grouping of reptiles that became noon predators during this time and grew to lengths contempo estimates (Grigoriev, 2014)identify at 56 anxiety. At the time, theMosasauruswouldn't have encountered whatever sharksnearlythe size of megalodon, although they would have had plenty of contest from other apex predators of the time such every bitPlesiosaurus.
Wondering who would win in a fight between pitting megalodon vs. Mosasaurus? We compared the 2 animals and which would win in a boxing. Information technology was a nail biter, but 1 of these two deep sea giants came out on top!
Megalodon vs.Livyatan
While megalodon was an order of magnitude larger than other sharks in its era, it faced competition from animals likeLivyatan.
In today'south oceans, the emergence of killer whales sometimes make nifty white sharks flee incredible distances. In one meet, after killer whales entered a great white'southward hunting ground off California, the shark fled all the mode to Hawaii! Like today'due south largest sharks, megalodon also faced contest from a giant whale that hunted the same casualty.
Its name wasLivyatan,and it was a ferocious competitor to megalodon.Livyatan was about the same size equally the massive shark, weighing an estimated 100,000 pounds and reaching upward to 57 feet in length. In addition,Livyatanhad incredibly big teeth that reached over a foot in length, making them the largest known biting teeth of any animate being!
Like megalodon,Livyatanis believed to have died out between 3.half dozen and 2.6 millon years ago. It's likely the two apex predators both struggled to adapt to climatic change and the loss of their primary prey of modest-to-medium size whales.
Megalodon vs. great white shark
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Size-wise, the matchup of a megalodon vs. a great white shark isno contest.After all, megalodon's were 'conservatively' estimated to weigh up to 100,000 pounds while great white sharks rarely grow to more than 5,000 pounds.
Nonetheless, when information technology comes to survival,bigger isn't ever amend.Contempo research proposes that the much smaller corking white shark actually helped cause the megalodon'due south extinction!
The theory is that effectually the time when megalodon were struggling to accommodate to cooling ocean climates, great white sharks evolved and began competing with juvenile megalodons and hunting smaller whales that were the megalodon's primary casualty. With both megalodon andLivyatangoing extinct 2.6 to 3.vi million years ago, bang-up white sharks and killer whales were left as much smaller apex predators of the seas.
Without the presence of massive predators, whales that filter-feed began growing to massive sizes. In fact, this development led to the evolution of the largest animal to ever live on Earth…
Megalodon vs. bluish whale
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The megalodon and blueish whale never met, equally the earliest fossils of 'mod' blueish whales appointment back to roughly 1.five million years agone. That'south near a million years afterward the megalodon is believed to take hunted the oceans.
When information technology comes to size, the blue whaledwarfseven the largest megalodon estimates. It's believed blueish whales tin reach a maximum length of 110 feet (34 meters) and weigh up to 200 tons (400,000 pounds!). That'due south more than twice the size of fifty-fifty the largest megalodon size estimates.
Blue whales and other gigantic whale species have evolved to be then largely because there's no apex predator the size of megalodon in today's ocean. Were there a shark of megalodon'south size still live today, it would surely banquet on large whale species such every bit the blueish whale.
With all these matchups beingness covered, there'due south just one question left. Is the blueish whale truly the biggest creatureever?
The biggest animals ever is…
Reaching a weight of 400,000 pounds (200 tons), the blue whale is the largest known animal to live on Earth. All the same, at that place are many 'incomplete fossils' that could point toward creatures that could claiming the blue whale's title as the biggest animal always.
For example, in 2018 paleontologists discovered a iii-pes jaw segment belonging to a newly discovered ichthyosaur. Comparing the jaw segment to more complete ichthyosaur fossils yields an guess of an brute that could take grown to 85-anxiety in size and roamed the oceans almost 200 1000000 years agone! At that size the creature could weight more than any blue whale that's always been discovered.
The bottom line: today the blue whale is the largestknownanimal to have always lived the Earth, only in the decades to come, more consummate fossil discoveries could re-write the history books!
Read more than:
- Our complete Megalodon folio!
- Lean more nearly great white sharks.
- Discover the 10 toughest animals on Earth.
- Or the 9 most dangerous animals alive today!
Source: https://a-z-animals.com/blog/the-biggest-animals-ever-5-gaints-from-the-ocean/
Posted by: maserneash1938.blogspot.com
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