Would like to understand the scientific understanding that can be simply conveyed.
Thanks you.
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Based on everything we know about it, megalodon was a am extremely active predator which focuses on coastal waters.
The unexplored bits of the ocean are DEEP waters, a slow and extremely efficient ecosystem because it lacks a rich base source of energy, namely the sun on land and in shallow waters. For something big and active, there just aren’t enough calories.
Coastal waters, where all of its fossils have been found, are a whole different story. They are well explored, frequently observed and their inhabits regularly show up washed up on beaches, in fishing nets, etc…
You’ll see stuff about undiscovered species in deep water all the time, but in the rush to discuss it they rarely mention that’s its virtually never megafauna.
There are things we don’t know WELL, like differentiating between colossal and giant squid being relatively recent and not having the best understanding of their lifestyle, but those have left visible and noticed signs for centuries. Washed up corpses, remains in whale bellies, a fossil record if only of beaks, etc…etc…
Megalodon, hasn’t. It’s presence in the fossil record cut off sharply and we haven’t found so much as a bite mark or a fossil tooth to suggest it continues. There’s just…NO evidence, and more importantly a sudden (on evoltionary timescales) swap from tons of evidence to none.
The theories FOR are also just….a little ridiculous. This was basically a complete non-question until discovery ran that stupid mockumentary awhile back. It’s not substantiated by anything but a few random fisherman’s tales about an unusually giant shark and an assertion that “the ocean is really big and unexplored, though!”. It has less support than ancient aliens or bigfoot.
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