Megalodon White Shark Tooth

Description

Megalodon White Shark Tooth measures 5.3 inches. Megalodon White Shark Tooth is museum quality polyurethane resin cast. Made in USA. Our precise tooth can be used as a teaching tool, museum tooth exhibit, home decor tooth, or office decor tooth.

Megalodon or Carcharocles megalodon, meaning “big tooth”, is an extinct species of shark that lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago (mya), during the Early Miocene to the Pliocene.

Megalodon or Carcharocles megalodon was formerly thought to be a member of the family Lamnidae, and a close relative of the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). However, presently there is near unanimous consensus that it 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.

Megalodon or Carcharocles megalodon was regarded as one of the largest and most powerful predators to have ever lived, megalodon 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 shark.

Megalodon or Carcharocles megalodon 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, Megalodon or Carcharocles megalodon probably used its strong jaws to break through the chest cavity and puncture the heart and lungs of its prey.

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