How do we know the megalodon is extinct if we explored less than 5% of the ocean?
In: 2002
This explored 5% part is fairly misunderstood. All of the ocean is mapped to at least a hundred meter (edit: was going off my head, in reality several km) resolution. This 5% part refers to the parts mapped to around 30 meter resolution or better.
Now this is topographic mapping, of course humans haven’t been to personally or remotely in most of the ocean, and there’s certainly lot of the marine biosphere waiting to be discovered. But the existence of something like the megalodon could be fairly well excluded.
Most obvious being their fossils remain just stop appearing at a certain age rocks. This alone does not automatically means they went extinct then, since fossilisation is a peculiar process, there’s a whole term for creatures that just re-appear after long bouts on no records (Lazarus taxons). But nevertheless we should have found some indicators of it’s existence for an animal that large, but there’s none. Take giant squids for example: They long have been known by maritime cultures, occassionally dead specimen gets washed out to shores, we see wounds on whales caused by giant tentacles, and of course we directly observed them.
For something like the megalodon, or a plesiosaur to name another popular example, we should have seen *some* evidence of it being still around.
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