A Fools Experiment

Imagine a shark the size of a modern Humpback whale. Now, imagine it with a mouth so large it could swallow you whole. It was a specialist, predating large marine mammals (small - medium sized whales) that frolicked in the ocean between 15.9 – 3.51 million years ago. I  work in a field where I frequently answer the same questions about the largest shark that ever existed...   “Is the Megalodon, the 15-18 metre long, 50 metric tonne shark... still alive?”  NO. No. NO. NOOOOOOOOOOO.  According to a new study,  ( Boessenecker RW, Ehret DJ, Long DJ, Churchill M, Martin E, Boessenecker SJ. 2019. The Early Pliocene extinction of the mega-toothed shark Otodus megalodon: a view from the eastern North Pacific. PeerJ 7:e6088 ) the revised estimates for the disappearance of  Otodus megalodon  have been pushed back by almost one million years. This gigantic shark was originally though to have died out 2.6 million years ago (at the border ...

As the human-made atom bomb fell, the explosive radiation allowed an instantaneous x-ray-like view of all creatures within the epicentre. Joking aside, the evolutionary split between baleen whales (Mysticeti) and echolocating toothed whales (Odontoceti) occurred ~ 34 million years ago. Sourced from http://jibrael.blogspot.com Travel back 34 Million years. We'll be straddling two major epochs in earth’s history, whereby the Eocene is giving way into the freezing cold climate of the earliest Oligocene. A hasty descent in global temperatures and the development of the emergent Antarctic Circumpolar Current (the most important of the modern era, responsible for three quarters of global marine export) is creating a new glut of food within its nutrient rich waters. The archaic forms of whale (the gigantic yet slender Basilosaurids, with diminutive back-legs) are being outcompeted by new, much stranger forms of giant whales. Some of these early whales are the ancestors of the tr...

R RR (2018) The Pygmy Right whale and “Carcharocles angustidens,” the ancestor of the Megalodon (12 th August 2018):   https://www.rrr.org.au/on-demand/segments/palaeontologist-ben-francischelli-discusses-the-elusive-pygmy-right-whale RRR (2018) The evolution of whales and macro-raptorial sperm whales (24 th October 2018):   https://player.fm/series/rrr-fm-37942/breakfasters-podcast-22-26-october Out of the Blue (2018) The evolution of baleen whales; the importance of a new finding (the 34 million year old “Llanocetus”):  https://www.3cr.org.au/radioblue/episode-201805201130/whale-time-our-fave-paleontologist-ben The “Laborastory” (2018) Science storytelling event; I shared my own personal experience with palaeontology and my personal hero, Mary Anning.   https://thelaborastory.com/stories/ben-francischelli-on-mary-anning/   BBC Earth Presenter Search (2018) Sneak preview of my documentary series "A Foo...