Megalodon - a prehistoric monster alive
The largest carnivorous marine animal that ever existed was in prehistoric times the monster Megalodon - a direct relative of the current great white shark.
It is believed that the megalodon became extinct more than two million years ago, when a cooling of the climate came in the Pliocene and the shelf seas, with the usual food for megalodon, were covered with glaciers. Traces of these huge ancient animals were found in the rocks of India, North Africa, Australia, Japan, Belgium and many other countries.
Most often, teeth are found from the skeleton of a prehistoric monster: the height along the diagonal of one tooth of this monster reached 18 cm - none of the creatures that lived in the ocean had teeth of this size.
But what is strange is that archaeologists began to discover relatively young remains of the megalodon - the age of which is 10 thousand - 8 thousand years ago. Moreover, reports of experienced crews of various sea vessels began to arrive, who saw in the waves of huge sizes a yellowish back with a characteristic fin. Could this mean that … Megalodon is alive?
Yes, let's say the sailors could be wrong, confusing the silhouette of an ancient monster with the silhouette of a whale shark. However, how can you explain the fact that the silhouette observed by the “Christina” team reached 35-37 meters in length? Even having reduced this figure by half - whale sharks of this size do not exist. But what kind of creature could it be?
A world sensation was the fact that, in 1954, in the bottom of the ship "Rachel Cohen", which stood in the dry dock of Adelaide for repairs, they found 17 huge teeth stuck in the wood. The width of each incisor reached 8 cm, the length was up to 10 cm. It should be noted that even a great white shark has a teeth size not exceeding 6 cm.
The teeth stuck in the bottom were located in a semicircle - a bite characteristic of sharks, near a curved screw, while the diameter of the semicircle reached 2 m. The captain later recalled how the ship shuddered off the island of Timor (Indonesia). Later, with the help of analysis, it was determined that the teeth actually belong to the megalodon. Does this mean giant monsters are around?
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Relatively not so long ago, the teeth of megalodons began to be found on the Baltic beaches - Otradnoye, Pionersk and Svetlogorsk. For 4 years, they discovered about 800 huge teeth that once belonged to ancient fish.
Off the coast of Tahiti, a research ship with a bottom grab found the teeth of a megalodon that have not yet been fossilized; their age is no more than 11 thousand years. From a geological point of view, animals, the signs of which have not been found for more than 400 thousand years, are considered extinct.
And here it’s only 11 thousand years! Here is the goblin shark, which, by the way, was considered extinct in the Pliocene. Her teeth were not found, silhouettes were not found, therefore they deservedly entered the list of prehistoric fish. And then, unexpectedly, they found the goblin shark itself, not even its young remains, but a rather living specimen itself. And not even one. The revived relic lived at great depths. Perhaps the megalodon is also swimming somewhere nearby?
If you make an assumption where the prehistoric carnivorous monster was able to survive the unfavorable conditions throughout this time, then with the greatest degree of probability paleontologists believe that this is the Mariana Trench - the fourth pole of the planet.
Only two people sank to the bottom of the Mariana Gorge. And they saw nothing there, only deep-sea invertebrates. After that, the study of the depression began with ocean sensors and sonars. They were able to fix the movements of massive bodies of unknown animals at the bottom. Many scientists are inclined to believe that the surviving representatives of Carcharodon megalodon are quite capable of dwelling at great depths.
Moreover, the bottom of the gorge is strewn with the teeth of the megalodon. Paleontologists are sure that the ancient monster, like other prehistoric animals, could wait out an unfavorable time here, at the fourth pole of the planet, where active hydrothermal springs beat out. The Mariana Trench is a pretty good spot.
It turns out that rumors that a giant shark was observed somewhere could be true? Perhaps the monster came out of its hideout to make sure that the world above was already fit for existence?
And if so, then very soon, when global warming leads to warming of the waters of the world's oceans, we can again see the lord of salt waters - the giant shark Carcharodon megalodon.
As for the Mariana Trench, some ichthyologists believe that due to the presence of active hydrothermal springs at its bottom, colonies of prehistoric marine animals that have survived to this day are capable of existing.
Is there evidence that in 1918 lobster fishermen from Port Stephens, Australia, saw a surprisingly translucent white 35 fish in the sea? meters in length. It was understandable that this fish rose from great depths. Many of the researchers believe that the last surviving representatives of the huge prehistoric shark of the Carcharodon megalodon species are hiding in the Mariana Trench, in its unexplored depths. Based on the few surviving remains, researchers were able to reconstruct what the megalodon looked like.
This prehistoric fish lived in the seas 2-2.5 million years ago and was gigantic in size: about 24 meters long, 100 tons in weight, and its dotted width 10? with a centimeter-long mouth, it reached 1.8–2.0 meters.
Not so long ago, while studying the Pacific Ocean, oceanologists managed to find well-preserved teeth of the megalodon. One of the finds is 24,000 years old, and the other is even younger - 11,000 years old! Could this mean that not all megalodons became extinct 2 million years ago?
During one of the dives in the Mariana Trench, the German research apparatus "Highfish" with people on board, being at a depth of 7 kilometers, suddenly "refused" to surface. Trying to understand the reason for this, the crew turned on the infrared camera. What they saw at first seemed like a group hallucination: a huge creature resembling a prehistoric lizard gripped the body of the bathyscaphe with its teeth, trying to gnaw at it like a nut … Having regained consciousness, the hydronauts activated a device called an "electric cannon". From the blow of a powerful discharge, the monster unclenched its terrible jaws and disappeared into the darkness of the abyss …
The immersion into the depths of the Mariana Trench of the American unmanned bathyscaphe platform ended with a sensation. Equipped with powerful floodlights, highly sensitive sensors and television cameras, it was lowered into the ocean depths using a steel net woven from 20 mm cables. After reaching the bottom of the bathyscaphe, cameras and microphones for several hours did not register anything interesting. And then, unexpectedly, on the screens of television monitors in the light of searchlights, the silhouettes of mysterious huge bodies began to flash. When the apparatus was hastily raised to the surface, some of its structures were bent.
2004 - The English magazine New Scientist spoke in detail about the mysterious sounds in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, which were detected by the underwater sensors of the American tracking system SOSUS. It was created during the Cold War to monitor Soviet submarines. Specialists who have studied recordings of signals of highly sensitive hydrophones have identified against the background of the noise, which is the "call signs" of various marine life, some much more powerful sound, clearly emitted by a creature living in the ocean.
This mysterious signal, first recorded in 1977, is much more powerful than the infrasound with which large whales communicate with each other when they are hundreds of kilometers away from each other.
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