You know, I really haven't drawn a megalodon at all during my time here, and not very recently in general. I would say that's because it keeps changing, but I think it's more likely that I've been really into terrestrial reptiles and less so in ocean life.
That said, my interest in sea life has grown more recently, with several sharks and other aquatic animals soon to be shown here.
Anyway, enough rambling. Here's the megalodon drawing.
No color
48 Votes in Poll
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Why the Megalodon still exists to some extent has been a matter of long controversy. Most scientists agreed that its extinction is something we have in fact caused; other think we never had one. What is now becoming increasingly clear is that there were probably a few existing megalodons on the planet before the oceans settled down and the Tyrannosaurus rex began to dominate the wilderness.
According to reports by Donald Henderson, and Craig McDonald, both biologists at the U.S. National Science Foundation, around 32 million years ago a whale somehow got stuck in a canyon during a full-moon night. By the time the sun came up the whale had died from blood loss, and the shallow riverbed was covered with corpses.
In a 2009 paper titled The Megalodon, Also Known As The Real Existence Of a Trench Monster, McDonald writes: "While the Megalodon is not a resident in shallow coastal water (as is the famous Tyrannosaurus), it has the inherent ability to swim quite deep."
Unfortunately the report fails to mention how the Megalodon swam without a dorsal fin, a crucial adaptation that all other sharks have. It would have had to be a black or walnut-shaped shark with less than a three foot dorsal fin to successfully sneak down into the trench.
Even if this creature was already swimming the ocean trench, McDonald points out, there would have been plenty of other animals able to outcompete it. These include the sharks called thresher sharks, which are well known for their epic feeding frenzies that stretch out for several hours. The biggest of these sharks, the Megalodon is said to have stretched out, or tigmented, its body to a width of more than twelve feet.
So does McDonald and other scientists still consider the claim of the existence of a real, extinct megalodon to be true? Based on what we know now, it isn't so sure. Even if it was there, its existence has probably only been real to a certain extent.
"What is certain," writes McDonald, "is that the fossil record of the megalodon is actually far more complex, varied and accurate than any story of a genuine ancient beast roaming the ocean depths."
In other words, if the report of the Trench Monster in a remote spot of the Pacific Ocean is indeed real, then so is the possibility that the reason this beast still exists today is because we somehow made it extinct in the first place.
Citations: McDonald, D., Exists, Real, Mariana, Trench. PLoS One.
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Megalodon Skeletal by Dan Folkes
