Original subtitles

♪

♪

♪

perfect. Standing by.

♪

shark on your right! Right!

Look! Look!

♪

gates: My name is josh gates...

Look! [ laughs ]

...I've traveled the world

investigating the greatest legends in history.

Oh, god!

...Now I'm diving into "shark week"

to solve the mystery of the ocean's ultimate predator.

Oh, my god!

Man: Whoa! Watch out!

It's on me!

This is "expedition unknown: Megalodon."

-- captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

mexico's baja peninsula.

Today, it's a tourist hotspot,

but 20 million years ago,

these waters were patrolled

by a terrifying dinosaur of the deep.

I stand about six foot, two inches,

which is why I'm lucky I don't have to swim

anywhere near this guy.

Meet otodus megalodon,

otherwise known as the meg.

60 feet long, 12 feet high,

and weighing in at 60 tons,

the meg was a real-life marine monster.

But after a 17-million-year run at the top of the food chain,

the meg suddenly vanished.

So, how did this ancient king of the deep go extinct?

Using fossilized teeth,

the latest research is uncovering

a deep-sea "game of thrones"

that pitted one species of shark against another

in a prehistoric battle for survival.

Now, I'm joining shark expert james ketchum

on the hunt for fossils,

teeth that could provide vital clues

to solve the ocean's greatest murder mystery --

who killed the mighty meg?

So, let's talk about the meg.

Here's what I know --

the meg is real

and jason statham killed it.

[ laughs ]

it's not true.

It was real except that it lived millions of years ago.

Okay, so, don't trust hollywood.

No. Give me a sense

of how big this animal was.

It was as large as 60 feet,

as large as a humpback whale.

That's crazy. That's humongous.

So, this was one of its habitats?

Absolutely. We actually find fossilized teeth

throughout the whole peninsula.

Why is a tooth the best way to understand this animal?

The tooth is the only thing that's left

because it's made of bone.

So, these teeth really are like its fingerprints.

Exactly, yes.

Unlike most murder mysteries, this one has no corpse.

That's because the meg, like all sharks,

was made mainly of cartilage and soft tissue,

leaving behind almost no physical remains

in the fossil record,

except for one -- teeth.

So, the meg's extinct, so I don't have to worry about that.

No. So, anything else here

I should worry about? There's bull sharks.

Come on.

Bull sharks earned their name for their powerful body,

flat snout, and aggressive, unpredictable attitude.

They are the charging bull of the shark kingdom.

♪

I have to say, as someone who's been diving

since I was a little kid... Yeah.

...I don't like bull sharks.

I've worked hard to avoid bull sharks.

They do tend to bite people,

but because they mistake the people for other fish.

So, we're kind of going into their home turf.

Yeah.

Perfect. Yeah.

James is taking me to a secret fossil bed

where meg teeth have previously been found.

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

we're looking for fossils

that have broken loose from the bedrock,

hidden beneath the sand.

And since we're not on the top of the food chain down here,

james acts as a much-needed lookout.

I continue combing the sandy bottom,

adding to my shell collection,

when suddenly, I realize we're not alone.

Growing up to 13 feet

and weighing in at more than 700 pounds,

bulls have the most powerful bite

in relation to their body size of any shark,

chomping down with nearly 6,000 newtons of force.

Bull sharks hunt big prey items like sea turtles and dolphins.

They're not afraid to pick on something their own size.

And right now, that's us.

As the curious bull sharks circle,

I nervously scour the bottom for teeth.

♪

it doesn't belong to a meg,

but the fact that it's here is a good sign.

Just like bull sharks,

megs would have kept the shark tooth fairy very, very busy,

shedding thousands of teeth in their lifetimes,

replacing each one with a new razor-sharp tooth

in line behind it.

With the bull shark starting to look a little peckish

and with no other teeth in sight,

we turn back to the surface.

♪

whoo!

Thanks, man.

We got a bull shark tooth, but no meg teeth.

So, moving on.

To crack the case on what took down this jurassic shark,

I need to find one of its teeth.

So, I trade in my flippers

to continue the hunt in an unexpected location.

♪

so, you might be wondering why the teeth of a beast

that lived in the ocean would be found

in the middle of the desert.

It's a fair question.

It's not because megalodon was a land shark

or because he was blown here by a sharknado,

it's because the entire baja peninsula

was actually underwater.

Tectonic forces created the baja peninsula

about 5.6 million years ago.

What was once ocean floor is now arid desert.

To find a meg tooth fossil,

I'm going to have to dig,

and I've called in a heavy-hitter for backup.

The guy that I'm going to meet

is named dr. Robert boessenecker.

He's a paleontologist at the forefront of meg research,

and he's helping to redefine the timeline

as to when this super-shark

vanished off the face of the earth.

♪

dr. Boessenecker, I presume.

You must be josh.

I'm a man in search of a meg tooth.

Until recently,

the meg's disappearance wasn't considered a mystery at all.

That's because scientists had the date wrong.

Gates: So, the conventional wisdom

as to when the meg went extinct used to be what?

About 2 million years ago.

Couple hypotheses are it's the onset of the ice age,

things are getting colder,

and also there's a supernova about 2 million years ago

that bathed the earth in muon radiation.

Muon radiation?

That sounds like a made-up term, but okay.

The old thinking makes sense.

Only something as lethal as an ice age or deadly radiation

could have taken out something as formidable as the meg,

but not so fast.

We started looking at fossil teeth,

and we noticed that most of the teeth

were no younger than 3 1/2 million years in age.

So, the meg went extinct a million years

before anybody thought? Exactly.

Okay, that's a huge deal.

Yes.

So, 3 million years ago,

we did not have any sort

of a big, worldwide cataclysmic event.

So, that means we have to find another reason

for the meg's demise? Yes.

Alright, josh, right on the side of this little ridge

is where we're gonna start looking.

This is a really great zone for finding fossil shark teeth.

Wow. Just literally on the ground?

Yeah. They are washed out from the rain.

Just get your nose up in the rock

and I guarantee you'll find one.

Only a paleontologist would say that.

Or a crack dealer.

One of the two. That's it.

Oh, check it out. Here we go. Here's one.

Look at that!

Literally embedded in the rock.

That's probably a bull shark or maybe a dusky.

That is incredible.

Ah. Here we go. Here's one.

Ah. Check it out. Here we go.

Oh, here's one.

Oop, here's one. Ooh, right there.

I'm gonna have a necklace by the end of the day.

That's a whale bone.

Wow! It's probably fossilized,

and one way to tell the difference

is whether or not it sticks to your tongue.

So...

What percentage of paleontologists are single, by the way?

It's a high number, right?

It is, indeed. Yeah.

So, yeah, this is definitely fossilized.

The good doctor and I get back to work,

dusting, scraping, and yes,

occasionally licking every square inch of rock

under the baja sun.

Oh, hey, josh! Come over here!

We got something! -What do you got, man?

Right here. Gates: Look at that!

It's huge!

Yeah, that's the root of it.

That's crazy!

Okay, let's see if we can pull it out.

Okay, let me get underneath it.

Keep going.

Boessenecker: I think you can pull it now.

Oh, my god! Whoa.

Look at that!

Gates: I'm in baja, mexico to solve a prehistoric murder mystery --

what drove the megalodon shark,

the biggest, most powerful predator of all time,

to extinction?

Paleontologist dr. Robert boessenecker

believes the answer may lie in the meg's fossilized teeth,

and we just found one.

Oh, my god! Boessenecker: Whoa.

Look at that! Beautiful.

Are you kidding me?

Look at the size of this thing!

That is a massive tooth.

That's unbelievable!

So, this is a full adult meg tooth?

Yeah, this is from a shark that was about

50 to 60 feet in length.

That is huge.

And it's just one of the estimated

276 super-sized chompers

that lined this super-shark's 11-foot mouth.

So, what can we learn from a tooth like this?

So, this tooth is really big, it's triangular,

it's thick, it's got serrated cutting edges.

This is an animal that had teeth adapted

for feeding on quite large prey.

And in fact, I brought something along to show you.

What is this?

This is a fossil whale rib

with megalodon bite marks on it.

And on this side,

the megalodon bit all the way through the rib.

That's insane.

Fossil evidence indicates

that the meg's primary diet was whales.

But around 3 to 4 million years ago,

the number and size of whales began to decline.

Because of this, the meg had to turn to smaller whales

and perhaps another more plentiful food source.

The problem was they weren't the only ones

who had a taste for seal.

Okay, so, if it didn't die out from some mass extinction event,

what killed the meg?

Could have been out-competed by a number of different sharks.

And one of them is still alive right here in baja today.

It's still alive? Yes.

So, shark species that are alive today

once went head-to-head with megalodons

in the hunt for smaller prey.

In fact, one of the biggest, strongest, and fastest

can be found in the waters off baja california --

the mako shark.

To learn if the mako could have given megalodons

a run for their money,

I'm meeting with shark behavior ecologist tristan guttridge.

Just put that on the bucket there.

Tristan. Hey.

Josh. How are you, man? How are doing?

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too.

I hear you're the man to see about a mako?

Yes. Let's go find some.

Let's do it.

We motor out three miles with the finest selection

of shark caviar aboard,

and it turns out sharks aren't the only creatures out here

with a taste for the finer things.

♪

[ seal barking ]

♪

how can you deny a sweet little face like that?

♪

satiated, the puppy-dog of the sea slips away.

With most of our precious cargo intact

for our real target, we press on.

So, I've now seen one of these meg teeth up close and personal,

and it is terrifying. Yeah.

So, the question is, could another animal

really have helped drive

this huge predator to extinction?

Something did it in. Could it be the mako?

Makos were around at the same time.

The only way you're gonna find that out

is by getting in the water with a mako shark

and getting up close and personal with it.

I was afraid you were gonna say that.

[ laughter ]

growing just 14 feet long, the mako would have been dwarfed

by the 60-foot meg.

But it has one big advantage --

the mako is fast,

capable of swimming up to 60 miles per hour.

The mako is the ferrari of the shark kingdom.

But was superior speed enough to out-compete the meg?

Guttridge: Josh, this is the mako-whisperer.

He's our secret weapon to getting a mako.

So, how do you get makos here?

Gates: Hey, a free meal is all it takes to get me somewhere.

And we're not just relying on jacopo's culinary expertise.

What is this bad boy called?

And what does this noise do?

Cool.

We're hitting three senses.

We're hitting visual, we're hitting smell,

and we're hitting acoustic, hearing, as well.

Great. Yeah.

It's almost like I could just lay down and have a beer.

While the crew dumps gallon after gallon

of jaws juice into the drink,

I partake in another time-honored cabo tradition,

[ snoring ]

the mid-day siesta.

[ intense music plays ]

[ calm guitar music plays ] [ snores ]

[ intense music resumes ]

♪

tristan, any sharks?

No, nothing yet. You just let me know, man.

I'm ready at a moment's notice.

I'm on high alert over here.

When you hear that word "shark," though,

you'll be up. I'm already up.

[ laughs ]

it turns out diving for sharks is a lot like fishing.

There's plenty of waiting.

♪

-shark! -Shark, shark, shark, shark!

♪

what do we got? I think it's a blue.

♪

wow.

♪

blue sharks are formidable predators,

and have even been observed hunting in packs,

growing up to 12 feet long

and weighing in at around 400 pounds.

Could the blue shark be a dark horse contender

for the title of meg killer?

Another pelagic predator, ocean wanderer.

Beautiful animal.

♪

as you can see, really beautiful blue coloration.

Gates: It really does. It has, like, a blue tint.

And then the big pectoral fins --

almost like an underwater aeroplane coming in.

♪

oh, my word.

And if you notice, the mouth is set slightly further back,

so they've got this quite big snout.

They should be called pinocchio shark, really.

With its long nose and recessed jaw,

the blue shark is best equipped to eat squid and small fish.

It rarely goes after the seals, dolphins,

and larger prey that the meg chased.

These blue sharks --

certainly no competition for something like the meg.

No chance. No chance.

♪

seems like he's kind of taken off.

Because there is other sharks around.

Could be something else in the neighborhood.

-Yeah. -Yeah.

Maybe a good sign that he took off.

-Oh, yeah. -Mm-hmm.

♪

-shark! Shark! Shark! -Shark! Shark!

Oh, whoa! Whoa!

Another one.

Is it a blue? No, it's a mako!

Look!

♪

he's got that triangle fin.

♪

we got a mako! Mako, guys!

Alright. Let's get in the water.

Let's get in. Come on.

We race to get our gear on...

♪

and jump in.

♪

shark, shark, shark! Starting to get away!

Look, look, look! Hammerhead! Hammerhead!

Gates: The unique hammer shape gives these sharks

nearly 360 degrees of vision.

They can see what's going on above

and below at the same time.

♪

♪

gates: I'm off the coast of baja, mexico,

with shark behaviorist tristan guttridge

to see if they lightning-fast

mako shark could have out-competed the massive

megalodon for prey like seals, leading to its extinction.

After chumming the water to attract one of the ocean's

most dangerous predators,

we were smack in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy.

♪

♪

♪

♪

gates: Tristan and I hold onto the bait line

as the mako absolutely demolishes his dinner.

♪

the fastest shark on earth

is designed for high-speed pursuit,

with its torpedo-shaped body and powerful tail.

And this one looks like it wants dessert.

♪

♪

josh, you've noticed the speed one this mako.

It's crazy. It turns on a dime.

There is nothing getting from a mako.

And so in terms of competing with a meg,

when it comes to speed,

no question, makos could compete.

In terms of speed, I don't think

the meg would have stood a chance against a mako.

So in terms of its bite, it doesn't seem like it's able

to get huge pieces of meat off these things.

You can see those teeth are like daggers.

Right. They're designed to grip.

Right.

To grip a pray like some slippery fish.

Yeah.

And the moment it's got that fish,

it just swallows it and engulfs it whole.

Right.

The meg can really pull massive chunks

out of whales and cetaceans, and things like that.

So the mako is not gonna be able to take out prey

the meg would have gone after.

So when we look at what may have taken out the meg,

it doesn't seem like the mako's actually a good suspect.

The mako, despite it being

a high-performance apex predator,

it's not the culprit that took out meg.

It seems the theory that the mako took down the megalodon

doesn't have any teeth -- or at least not the right ones.

But there's another shark that may have been big enough,

strong enough, and fast enough to challenge the mighty meg --

the great white.

To see these modern masters of the deep

and get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all,

I'm traveling to the great white shark capital of the world.

From cabo, it's more than 9,000 miles

southeast to mossel bay, south africa.

♪

I'm heading out before the crack of dawn

with acclaimed shark researcher alison towner.

It turns out great whites and alison are morning people.

So I'm gonna need some orientation here.

Where am I other than south africa?

So you are in a great white shark hot spot

known as mossel bay.

And what we have that's very unique here is, just over there,

a stone's throw from the harbor, we have a large rock

that is home to a colony of cape fur seals.

Home to more than 8,000 cape fur seals,

seal island is like an endless vending machine

for great whites.

♪

they patrol these waters,

waiting for seals to stray too far from shore.

Then they strike.

So what I'm really interested in is understanding

how the great white operates, how it hunts,

and whether it truly could have been kind of a death knell

for he meg. So how do we do that?

We're gonna perform a really interesting series

of experiments here, because it's the perfect place

to test things like the hunting strategies of white sharks,

how fast they can swim, how they manipulate their prey.

So there's lots of different angles we can watch them

from here to try to better answer your questions.

Okay.

Modern great white sharks can grow to more than 20 feet long,

but they're just one-third the length of the meg.

So could the great white have been able to out-hunt

its prehistoric rival, leading to the meg's extinction?

To find out, alison has set up a series of experiments

to investigate the attack strategy of the great white.

So we're gonna put this seal decoy in the water

about 50 feet behind the boat, and the idea is to try

and simulate the movement of a cape fur seal in transit.

And we're hoping we can elicit a response.

A breach where they come up vertically and out of the water.

Correct. Known as a polaris breach.

And I'll tell you something --

to see the white shark in the water is incredible.

But to see it a few feet in the air

is absolutely mind-blowing.

We toss our foam decoy into the murky waters

and set it adrift a short distance from the boat.

In the pre-dawn hours,

the silhouette looks just like a cape fur seal.

Alright, josh, so you can't take your eye off that decoy.

You've gotta keep the camera focused on it.

Okay.

The shark hits it, it's gonna be split-seconds.

Lightning strike. You're gonna see a splash,

and then that's literally gonna be it.

Then I can sell it for huge money and retire.

We slowly circle seal island,

attempting to lure a great white to our decoy.

As the old showbiz saying goes,

never work with children or animals.

It turns out sharks don't breach on command.

Nature, as ever, is unpredictable.

Maybe we should throw some barbecue sauce on that thing.

[ chuckles ]

I'm begging you, if there was ever a moment...

♪

oh, wow.

What?

Shark out there?

With our cameras all focused on the decoy,

we nearly miss the real thing.

In a split second, the live seal is toast.

Those seals are freaking out.

Blood is literally in the water,

and the great whites are circling.

We loop around for another pass to see

if lightning will strike twice.

It's gonna happen again, eh?

Okay, so...

Oh! Oh, breach!

Unbelievable!

Gates: I'm in mossel bay, south africa,

getting my first glimpse of the great white shark

to see if it had a competitive edge

over a monster shark of the past -- the megalodon.

We're towing a seal decoy to entice these super predators

to demonstrate their ambush attack strategy,

the lightning-fast aerial breach.

Okay, so...

Towner: Oh!

Oh! Unbelievable!

Rocketing from the depths to surprise their prey,

great whites have been seen leaping 10 feet in the air.

Did you get it? That one, I got.

But if you're a seal, it's not such a pretty picture.

The impact of a great white breach attack

has been measured at a force of nearly 30 gs,

comparable to being hit by a car.

Oh. Breach!

Oh!

Right out of the water!

Oh, my god!

The breach attack allows great whites

to sneak up on their prey

and deliver a death blow in mere seconds.

Oh! Breach!

Oh, ho ho! Oh!

That was completely out of the water.

♪

it's terrifying, really.

You realize not just the power that they have,

but the accuracy.

Yeah, the great white is an ambush hunter to its core.

That's astounding.

Oh, there's a tooth. Look at that!

Unbelievable!

There's literally a tooth stuck in the decoy.

And, look at this. This whole chunk missing.

Could the meg have hunted like this?

While we know that the sort of advantage

that a white shark has on it is that it is smaller, it's agile,

and it's able to accelerate on a dime,

I don't think they would have been as efficient

as white sharks.

The sheer size and weight of a meg suggests

it was not well-equipped to ambush its prey.

And even if it could breach,

expending that much energy on a single seal

may not have been worth it.

It is estimated that the meg had to eat

2,500 pounds of food a day --

that's 10 full-grown cape fur seals.

The great white, on the other hand,

can survive on just one seal a week.

Let's see what we got here.

Wow. Absolutely perfect.

So that's an upper tooth.

So the top teeth of white sharks are the cutters,

the bottom teeth are the pinners.

For our second experiment,

we're testing the cutting ability

of a megalodon tooth versus a great white tooth

using raw steak.

I was hoping for, like, a nice medium-rare.

But alright, so meg tooth, here we go.

Alright, the meg tooth cuts, but actually not all that deep.

And not easily. Yeah, it looks like

you're really having to work at that, too.

And so great white tooth, here we go.

Same pressure, same motion.

Whoa. It's amazing.

It slices right through it.

Super sharp, like a razor blade.

The great white tooth is really, really effective at cutting.

Absolutely.

How much would you expect to pay for a shark tooth like this?

Get yourself a great white shark tooth.

$59.95? $49.95?

Clear out your steak knifes.

If you call right now.

If you call right now.

Two easy installments

of $9.95.

Get your credit cards ready,

because the choice is crystal clear.

Even in its prime, this megalodon tooth

lacked the finely serrated edges of a great white tooth.

Alright, advantage great white.

Now, can we get these things grilled up or what?

We got a hibachi out here?

For our next test, alison takes the helm

while her associate, dr. Enrico gennari,

introduces me to his brand-new toy,

designed to test the speed of a great white.

This is robo-seal.

This looks like something batman would own.

Yeah, here we want to be able to see the real speed

of the shark on a chase.

How fast can this boat go?

This can go up to 50 miles per hour in a split second.

What do you have in here? You got a v-8 in this thing?

It's a seal on steroids.

Our goal is to lure a great white shark

as close to robo-seal as possible,

then take off and try to get him to follow,

mimicking the top speed of a seal,

about 25 miles per hour.

Alright, enrico, let's talk about pattern of movement here.

What should I be doing?

This is the kill zone.

So it's zigzagging.

I am a seal.

Be one with the seal.

You're doing perfect.

Have you been a seal before?

Played a lot of video games growing up.

Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I can see it.

As soon as we see the shark,

you'll have a split second to accelerate.

I didn't know that shark research could be this much fun.

I feel like it's christmas morning.

Shark on your right!

Look, look.

As soon as the shark appears, I gun it.

♪

♪

ooh! Oh, [bleep]!

Holy moly!

Robo-seal!

It's gone!

Robo-seal!

♪

♪

robo-seal, no!

♪

[ splash ]

oh. He's up!

Oh, here we go. Get closer and closer.

Okay, got you.

Okay, we got it?

Oh, robo-seal, baby, what happened?

It bit right into it.

Look at all these teeth marks.

What this really shows is that these seals --

and, unfortunately, robo-seal -- they don't stand a chance.

Experts estimate that the top speed of the meg

was a sluggish 15 miles per hour.

Unlike the great white,

the meg simply wasn't fast enough to catch a seal

traveling at top speed.

Robo-seal, rest in pieces.

It was a good robo-seal.

But before we can prep our next experiment,

this shark decides he's gonna need a bigger boat.

Whoa.

Bit the prop.

I've seen this movie.

I know what happens now.

Now it's gonna get us one by one.

Does it have preference for who it takes first or...

Yes, the biggest ass-[bleep] goes first.

I'm gone.

The only person who's gonna survive is the virgin.

Aidan.

[ laughter ]

our first three experiments suggest

that the great white was a faster

and more efficient seal-hunter than the meg.

Now we're getting up close and personal

to test the great white's agility

and see how they move in the water.

It's eerily silent.

♪

♪

♪

whoo, hoo-hoo! Hey, josh, was that close enough for you?

Two sharks, two sharks!

Gates: There's nothing that can describe the sensation

of seeing a 15-foot, 2,000-pound great white rocket

through the water and turn on a dime.

Imagine a school bus coming at you at top speed.

Oh, and the bus has hundreds of razor-sharp teeth.

♪

♪

shark on your right! Right -- look, look!

Look at it, look at it!

Boy, careful on your -- look out!

♪

whoa! It's on the cage right here!

She's on top of the cage!

♪

gates: I'm about to get in the water

with a high-octane apex predator, the mako shark.

But first, tristan gives me a safety lesson

that doesn't exactly boost my confidence.

These sharks are very inquisitive.

They're kind of touchy-feely.

They'll sometimes stop in front of you.

If they do that, just guide it away.

Like, with my hand?

Yeah, just push it away.

Like, shark kung fu is what you're describing?

Push -- just guide it away. Just guide it away.

Just put your arm up to the shark's mouth and guide it away.

Well, just, you know...

No, that sounds like great advice.

Just put my hand right up near it and punch it in the face.

Give it a judo chop.

Just kind of guide it away.

I now have my yellow belt in shark fu

thanks to mr. Miyagi.

♪

gennari: Shark on your right.

Gates: I'm off the southern tip of africa

diving with great white sharks

to see if their remarkable agility

could have helped them out-compete

the megalodon for food, leading to its extinction.

Shark on your right, right! Look, look!

We're surrounded by nature's most-feared predator,

and one of them is a little too close for comfort.

Gennari: Look out.

Whoa, it's on the cage right here!

She's on top of the cage!

♪

♪

josh, are you alright? Are you alright?

The shark was right on top.

Was he close enough for you guys?

[ laughs ]

gates: Trapped in a cage beneath an angry shark

was definitely unexpected.

But behind the bars, alison and I are treated

to a display of pure underwater agility.

♪

josh, big shark circling.

Whoa!

Shark in front of you.

And it's a bigger one.

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shark on your right, look on your right.

♪

♪

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gates: I'd like to stay down here for hours,

but with our air running low, alison and I have to surface.

You can't fully appreciate just how agile

they are until you're in the water,

because we had one that passed us,

and then immediately, it was facing us again.

Exactly. We think of things

that approach the size of a meg,

things like whales, they're not really known

for their fast cornering, you know?

Yeah, large body sizes, it would be difficult to do that, right?

Yes. Really being down there does help put it all together,

because you see firsthand that there is an efficiency

to these great whites that feels kind of unparalleled.

They really are just so nimble.

And when it comes to attacking prey,

it's just hard to imagine

something being more effective than a great white.

These sharks have really refined

and embodied the agility and power to take on the prey

that probably a large megalodon would not be able to.

So what do you think?

Did great white out-compete the meg?

I think a lot of the evidence that we've collected to date

is looking favorable that we certainly know white sharks

have a lot of competitive advantages over megs.

But with improving technology, I think in the future,

the science is only gonna get clearer.

Thank you so much for taking me out here today.

3.6 million years ago, the megalodon,

the largest shark ever to roam the earth's oceans,

mysteriously vanished.

But it left behind a trail of clues, fossilized teeth,

allowing scientists to learn what this 60-foot monster shark

looked like, what it ate, and how it may have met its end.

Fossil records indicate

that around four million years ago,

the whale population, the meg's primary food source,

began to decline.

Forced to feed on smaller prey like seals,

the meg was now in direct competition

with another apex predator, the great white.

This battle for survival favored the faster,

more agile shark.

Adapted to taking down huge whales,

the massive meg simply couldn't compete with a seal specialist.

In the case of the megalodon,

the evidence seems to suggest being bigger wasn't better.

Should we swim in or what?

[ laughs ]

no, let's take the boat back.

Let's...

Let's take the boat back.

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