Mega Jaws, “The Black Demon…”
— Hmm…you go looking for a megalodon, and find…a whale shark! Somehow, the thrill is gone…
MonsterQuest went in search of a surviving megalodon shark in the Sea of Cortez in a recent offering, seeking also to better date a megalodon tooth specimen found by the HMS Challenger and estimated in 1959 to be about 10,000 years old.–Surprise! The tooth was judged not to be datable by modern scientific methods…bummer!
Now since sharks lack bones, most of what we know about extinct species comes from their teeth, with paleontologists estimating ten feet of shark for every inch of tooth. By such calculation, megalodon measured up to 50 feet long, weighed up to 50 tons, and was two to three times larger than today’s great white shark. This bad boy lived during the Miocene and Pliocene Eras, 25 to 5 million years ago.–What did they eat?–anything they wanted to, but probably seals at the small end of the scale to giant squid, other sharks, and whales…truly an apex predator!
MonsterQuest felt that most of the sightings is the area were misidentifications of whale sharks, who are just filter feeders. Some feel that MonsterQuest would have had better luck locating a megalodon in the Marianas Trench area…
Tags: megalodon, The Black Demon
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FOXSYLVANIA 
September 4, 2009 at 1:58 am
Lol! You mean, the _Marianas_ Trench?
Seriously, though: the first time I heard that theory was in the Steven Alten novel, MEG? Good read; although the sequels are a little lackluster.
As for this episode, itself? It’s one of those schedule-filling repeats; usually shown in marathons while new episodes are being produced and edited. Still, I wish they’d start looking into other cryptids, like the Swiss tazelwurm; or, the South American iemische (sic?); or even the Nandi Bear of Central/East Africa!
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September 4, 2009 at 2:16 am
Thanks for the correction!
I’ve got some killer dust bunnies under my bed that they could do a feature on…
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September 5, 2009 at 2:40 am
Don’t you mean…Rabbids? 😉
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September 5, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I’ve got rabbids, I even have dust Rhinos! Their charges keep me ever on the defensive…
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September 6, 2009 at 2:49 am
You know the best way to keep a rhino from charging?
Take away his credit card!!!!!
;-D
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November 30, 2014 at 2:24 am
Came across this review after watching the Monster Quest on YouTube, then came across the accidental capture of a very large Great White in 2012, guess it wasn’t just whale sharks!
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