Megalodon Black Shark Tooth

Description

Megalodon Black Shark Tooth measures 4.6 inches. Megalodon Black Shark Tooth is museum quality polyurethane cast. Made in USA. Caracharadon megalodon is the scientific name. Our precise tooth can be used as a teaching tool, museum tooth exhibit, home decor tooth, or office decor tooth.

Megalodon Black Shark or Carcharocles, meaning “big tooth”, is an extinct species of shark that lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago, during the Early Miocene to the Pliocene. The Megalodon or Carcharocles was formerly thought to be a member of the family Lamnidae, and a close relative of the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias).

Presently there is near unanimous consensus that Megalodon Black Shark or Carcharocles belongs to the extinct family Otodontidae, which diverged from the ancestry of the great white shark during the Early Cretaceous. Its genus placement is still debated, authors placing it in either Carcharocles, Megaselachus, Otodus, or Procarcharodon. This is because transitional fossils have been found showing that Megalodon is the final chronospecies of a lineage of giant sharks originally of the genus Otodus which evolved during the Paleocene.

While regarded as one of the largest and most powerful predators to have ever lived, is known from fragmentary remains, and its appearance and maximum size are uncertain. Scientists differ on whether it would have more closely resembled a stockier version of the great white, Rhincodon typus, Cetorhinus maximus or the Carcharias taurus.

Megalodon black shark or Carcharocles probably had a major impact on the structure of marine communities. The fossil record indicates that it had a cosmopolitan distribution. It probably targeted large prey, such as whales, seals and sea turtles. Juveniles inhabited warm coastal waters and fed on fish and small whales. Unlike the great white, which attacks prey from the soft underside, they probably used its strong jaws to break through the chest cavity and puncture the heart and lungs of its prey.

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