Free Republic

Scientists have discovered that the extinct megalodon shark was warm-blooded, as indicated by the isotopes in its tooth enamel. Their research suggests that the megalodon could maintain a body temperature about 13 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding water, a significant difference compared to other contemporary sharks. A killer, yes. But analysis of tooth minerals reveals how the warm-blooded predator maintained its body temperature. Researchers have determined that the extinct megalodon shark was warm-blooded, able to maintain its body temperature higher than the surrounding water. However, the energy needed for this temperature regulation might have contributed to the megalodon’s extinction...

Jaws may have terrified you at the cinema, but the iconic great white would have been dwarfed by Carcharocles megalodon, the largest shark in the history of the planet. The giant creatures lived between 23 million and 2.6 million years ago and scientists are divided over how and why the species perished. Now, details of fossils from the huge shark that lived alongside the dinosaurs have been studied for the first time in an attempt to solve this mystery.

SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) – A Florida man is recovering after surviving an alligator attack over the weekend. Jeffrey Heim was diving in the Myakka River on Sunday looking for megalodon teeth when he was attacked from behind by an alligator. “I thought it was a boat it hit me so fast or it felt like it was so fast,” the 25-year-old said. He told our sister station WFLA he wasn’t in the water for very long when the attack happened. He thinks the alligator was about 9 feet long and possibly a female. It’s currently alligator mating season in Florida....

Taking a dip in the ocean and coming face to face with a predator of the deep would be enough to scare anyone. Modern day great white sharks are intimidating creatures, but they wouldn’t have held a candle to the ancient super-sized beast known as megalodon. The long-extinct shark has been the subject of many research efforts in the past, with scientists attempting to determine when and where it lived, and perhaps even figure out why it’s no longer around. Now, new fossil evidence suggests that the colossal creature actually died off quite a bit earlier than was originally thought,...

The reconstructed megadolon was 16 metres long and weighed over 61 tons. In a new 3D modeling study published this week in Science Advances, we show that the giant extinct shark, Otodus megalodon, was a true globetrotting super-predator. It was capable of covering vast distances in short order, and could eat the largest of modern living super-predators, the killer whale, in five gargantuan bites. It could have swallowed a great white shark whole. The largest shark that ever livedMegalodon was the largest shark that ever lived, and it was around for a long time—from around 23 million to 2.6...

Megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived, is known only from its gigantic bladelike teeth, which can be more than 7 inches long. But these teeth, described by some scientists as the "ultimate cutting tools," took millions of years to evolve into their final, iconic form. Megalodon's earliest ancestor, Otodus obliquus, sported three-pronged teeth that could have acted like a fork for grasping and tearing fast-moving fishes. In later megatooth shark species, teeth flattened and developed serrated edges, transitioning to a knifelike shape for killing and eating fleshy animals like whales and dolphins.But the final tooth evolution in this lineage...

Taking a dip in the ocean and coming face to face with a predator of the deep would be enough to scare anyone. Modern day great white sharks are intimidating creatures, but they wouldn’t have held a candle to the ancient super-sized beast known as megalodon. The long-extinct shark has been the subject of many research efforts in the past, with scientists attempting to determine when and where it lived, and perhaps even figure out why it’s no longer around. Now, new fossil evidence suggests that the colossal creature actually died off quite a bit earlier than was originally thought,...

About 2.6 million years ago, an oddly bright light arrived in the prehistoric sky and lingered there for weeks or months. It was a supernova some 150 light years away from Earth. Within a few hundred years, long after the strange light in the sky had dwindled, a tsunami of cosmic energy from that same shattering star explosion could have reached our planet and pummeled the atmosphere, touching off climate change and triggering mass extinctions of large ocean animals, including a shark species that was the size of a school bus. The effects of such a supernova—and possibly more than...

Warner Bros has dropped the first trailer for summer shark pic The Meg. The Jason Statham-starrer is a sci-fi thriller about a prehistoric 75-foot-long predator, the Megalodon, who threatens the lives of a research team trapped underwater — and, yes, the fate of the ocean itself. As far as summer popcorn fare, the tagline says it all: “Chomp On This.”