Megalodon
The largest predatory shark ever known grows to fifteen metres and hunts whales.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 18 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Otodus megalodon appears near the start of the Miocene and becomes the ocean's dominant predator, reaching perhaps 15 to 18 metres with teeth over 18 centimetres long and the most powerful bite ever estimated. Bite marks on fossil whale bones show it targeted marine mammals, often attacking the ribcage and flippers. Because sharks are cartilaginous it is known almost entirely from teeth and vertebrae. It declines and dies out in the Pliocene, as cooling seas, shrinking prey and competition from the emerging great white close in.