What Happened to the Megalodon?

(Carcharocles megalodon) was the scourge of the seas some 23 million to about 2.6 million years ago, during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs. The largest megalodons likely measured about 17.9 meters (58.7 feet) long, which made them the largest sharks, the largest fish, and possibly even the largest marine predators ever known. Naturally, people are fascinated by this creature, and some even wonder whether this sea monster might still prowl modern oceans. Does it still exist?

Fossil evidence suggests that megalodons went extinct before about 2.6 million years ago, during a period of cooling and drying in many parts of the world. These changes may have been related to the closing of the seaways separating North from South America and Eurasia from Africa. The emergence of the Isthmus of Panama, for example, likely split populations of predators and prey alike and deflected ocean currents from



their usual paths. The mix of environmental changes and rising walls of land almost certainly disrupted marine food chains, including those that supported baleen whales (which feed on krill and zooplankton), which scientists believe were the main prey of megalodons. With white sharks and early killer whales also evolving to become formidable competitors with megalodons by that time, megalodons found fewer prey, and their populations crashed.

It is extremely unlikely that megalodons continue to lurk beneath the waves. Scientists know this because hundreds of fossil teeth (and a few vertebrae) have been found in the regions that were once shallow seas during the Miocene and Pliocene. Supposedly, some megalodon fossils date to the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), but these claims are not considered to be reliable. So far, no direct evidence of megalodons living in modern times has been found. Serious indirect evidence, such as megalodon-sized (3-meter- [9.8-foot-] wide) bite marks appearing on today’s humpback and blue whales, for example, is also lacking. What about the prospect of a reclusive deep-ocean population hidden from the prying eyes of human satellites and submersibles? This scenario is also very unlikely, because evidence suggests that megalodons established nurseries for their young in shallow-sea regions (like the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas) and hunted in these and other well-lit marine environments, such as in the first few hundred meters beneath the waves. After all, the bulk of their food—whales (and the krill the whales depended on)—lived there too.