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How Megalodon Worked · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by square Space. Start
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Speaker 1: off square Space. Set your website apart. Welcome to you
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Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:23
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
0:25
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant's Jerry, This Joson John, and this is
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Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Mega Loodon, Burgo Loodon, saxomaphone. Jerry,
0:36
Speaker 1: How where's yours? Nice? Jerry? Yeah, she's trained, well so, Chuck. Yep,
0:44
Speaker 1: you ever seen Mega Ladon? No, no, you haven't neither
0:53
Speaker 1: ye NEI there's any human being because they're extinct, that's right. Um,
1:00
Speaker 1: but they are pretty awesome. And when they were alive,
1:04
Speaker 1: you would not have wanted to see one anyway mm
1:07
Speaker 1: hmm well maybe from sure maybe until they learned to walk. Yeah,
1:14
Speaker 1: and you would have been like, oh, I regret coming
1:16
Speaker 1: to the shore today. Um. Caracodon megaladon, Yeah, I think
1:27
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a carcrodon. How's that couch adon?
1:32
Speaker 1: Let's a carcrodon carchar I likedon right, that's the official name. Uh.
1:39
Speaker 1: And it was a real thing. It's not made up. Um, No,
1:42
Speaker 1: it is not the invention of a cryptozoologist or a
1:46
Speaker 1: sci fi writer. No, it was a real thing. It
1:49
Speaker 1: was a real thing. And giant, giant shark, I mean
1:54
Speaker 1: so giant. It's it's I don't want to overuse the
1:57
Speaker 1: word my bobbling, so I'm just gonna say incredible, you remarkable.
2:01
Speaker 1: Should we go and just say the size of a
2:02
Speaker 1: school bus? Yeah, I saw size of a greyhound bus.
2:05
Speaker 1: It's about the same size. Well, I guess, yeah, one
2:09
Speaker 1: smells a lot worse than the other. Which one and
2:13
Speaker 1: the greyhound? The school bus just smells like fear and disappointment,
2:18
Speaker 1: and the greyhound bus smells like all that plus days
2:22
Speaker 1: and days of body odor and farts and cigarette butts.
2:28
Speaker 1: Have you ever taken a long bus trip? That's a
2:31
Speaker 1: one from Arizona to Atlanta. It's it's the worst. Yeah, no, one, No.
2:36
Speaker 1: I think I might have talked about this. It didn't
2:38
Speaker 1: dawn on me until like day two. I was like,
2:40
Speaker 1: wait a minute, nobody is able to shower. We're all
2:47
Speaker 1: just getting stinkier. We're all eating garbage food and farting
2:51
Speaker 1: into our cloth seats. It was awful. How long did
2:55
Speaker 1: the trip take. It feels like it was like three
2:58
Speaker 1: days because you know, he's stop like every freaking two hours,
3:04
Speaker 1: you know, because you got account for you know, however
3:06
Speaker 1: many people on there, and it breaks down, didn't break down,
3:10
Speaker 1: and you just had to stop a lot for breaks,
3:13
Speaker 1: and we got stopped in Mississippi for a drug dog
3:16
Speaker 1: to come on. Oh really, did anybody getting in trouble? No,
3:21
Speaker 1: they just randomly stopped for the drop drug dog. And
3:24
Speaker 1: this German shepherd jumped all over the seats and they
3:27
Speaker 1: opened up the baggage underneath and he ran all over
3:30
Speaker 1: the place. So I guess then he went home and
3:31
Speaker 1: took a shower. Yeah, he was like man getting out
3:34
Speaker 1: of there. I guess smuggling drugs on a on a
3:36
Speaker 1: bus is Actually when I thought about it, was like,
3:38
Speaker 1: what a great idea, Yeah, because it's apparently under the radar. Yeah,
3:42
Speaker 1: and um, everybody else's smell is overpowering the smell of
3:46
Speaker 1: the drugs. You'd think they probably were tons of drugs
3:49
Speaker 1: on that bus and the dog was just like I
3:52
Speaker 1: had ten pounds of cocaine and they didn't smell that
3:56
Speaker 1: just kidding, So like you really needed to say just kidding.
3:59
Speaker 1: You never no kids listen to this, Yeah, probably especially
4:02
Speaker 1: this one. We want to say hello to all of
4:04
Speaker 1: the sixth grade classes that are listening to this right now,
4:07
Speaker 1: and we'd also like to say a special hello to
4:09
Speaker 1: our new sponsor, Greyhound Bus Lines. Leave the driving to them,
4:17
Speaker 1: so chuckers. Yes, um, where we are talking about the Megaladon,
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Speaker 1: the biggest shark that ever lived, and it may have
4:25
Speaker 1: had from what I can understand, it makes sense too
4:27
Speaker 1: if you stop and think about it. It may have
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Speaker 1: had the um most devastating as how I've seen it
4:34
Speaker 1: put bite of any animal that ever lived in the
4:37
Speaker 1: history of Earth. Yeah, I would say, I would say
4:39
Speaker 1: that's accurate. It was bigger than t rex. T Rex
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Speaker 1: is very ferocious, had a very ferocious bite ergo ipso
4:46
Speaker 1: fact though it was probably um more ferocious as bite
4:51
Speaker 1: wise than t rex or anything else. Let's talk about
4:56
Speaker 1: it all right before, like years ago, people were dumb
5:02
Speaker 1: and they thought they found these fossils of these humongous
5:07
Speaker 1: six inch teeth, like a tooth itself. It's like larger
5:12
Speaker 1: than a hand, a human hand, like a largish human hand.
5:15
Speaker 1: So so again to put this in perspective, because everybody
5:18
Speaker 1: knows what great white teeth looked like about the size
5:21
Speaker 1: of a shot glass. It's a great white tooth. Okay,
5:24
Speaker 1: so about two inches. Um, these were six so three
5:28
Speaker 1: times larger than a great white tooth. And t Rex
5:31
Speaker 1: is right in the middle at something. Yeah, t Rex
5:35
Speaker 1: is at about four inches. So we're talking a megaladon
5:37
Speaker 1: tooth is fifteen centimeters in length, where great white sharks
5:41
Speaker 1: is about five centimeters. And that's we're a single tooth.
5:45
Speaker 1: I just went tooth, very very large, and I saw
5:48
Speaker 1: that they actually go up to seven inches as far
5:51
Speaker 1: as what they found. So four years ago people found
5:55
Speaker 1: these fossils and they said, oh my god, it's a
5:59
Speaker 1: petified dinosaur tongue, dragon tongue. Oh even better, Well, I
6:06
Speaker 1: have dragon, snakes and dinosaurs down in my research. I
6:10
Speaker 1: saw dragons only I believe in dragons four hundred years ago. Um.
6:16
Speaker 1: And then in sixteen sixty seven, Danish anatomus named Nicholas
6:22
Speaker 1: Stino said, these aren't tongues, their teeth. Don't be stupid, everybody, Yeah,
6:29
Speaker 1: these are gigantic teeth, and everybody's like, don't be ridiculous.
6:34
Speaker 1: They're they're dragon tongues. I'm wearing one around my neck
6:36
Speaker 1: as we speak, and I use it in my potions,
6:39
Speaker 1: along with eye of newt probably, so oh yeah, apparently
6:42
Speaker 1: they did use it in medicine. You find something that big,
6:45
Speaker 1: it's gotta have great powers short when you grind it
6:47
Speaker 1: up and snored it. So they found these teeth over
6:51
Speaker 1: the years, and these these fossils, uh, not only just
6:54
Speaker 1: the teeth, but something called CenTra c E N t
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Speaker 1: R A H. And that is the uh it's not vertebrae,
7:02
Speaker 1: but it's a part of the spine that doesn't deteriorate, right,
7:06
Speaker 1: because here's the problem. A shark skeleton is made up
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Speaker 1: almost entirely of cartilage, So no matter how big it is,
7:13
Speaker 1: over time that cartilage is going to break down and
7:16
Speaker 1: return to the dust on the bottom of the sea
7:18
Speaker 1: floor and you'll never know what was ever there. But
7:21
Speaker 1: luckily those teeth in the center are made of harder
7:24
Speaker 1: stuff and the teeth actually become fossilized. And there's another
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Speaker 1: one of my favorite episodes that just flies under the radar.
7:31
Speaker 1: Fossil fossils was great, and that's an old one. So
7:34
Speaker 1: you remember the fossilization processes where the the individual atoms
7:38
Speaker 1: of this stuff are basically replaced by stone and the
7:44
Speaker 1: thing literally turns to stone. So anything organic and it
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Speaker 1: is replaced by stone and it becomes fossilized in that sense.
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Speaker 1: So that's why something like a tooth could survive. It
7:55
Speaker 1: becomes stone. And apparently the same thing goes with the center.
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Speaker 1: So taking megalodon teeth and mega look at then CenTra.
8:02
Speaker 1: They started making calculations and measurements and figuring out like,
8:06
Speaker 1: oh my god, this thing was enormous. Yeah, and we've
8:09
Speaker 1: mentioned the t rex and dinosaurs a couple of times.
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Speaker 1: They weren't. If you're picturing in your head dinosaurs roaming
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Speaker 1: the earth and the megalodon swimming in the ocean fighting
8:17
Speaker 1: one another. Yeah, they didn't overlap by about forty five
8:20
Speaker 1: million years, so it wasn't even close. Uh. And of
8:24
Speaker 1: course humans we haven't been around that long at all
8:27
Speaker 1: in the Grand scheme, No Homo sapiens maybe a hundred
8:30
Speaker 1: thousand years or so. Yeah, so obviously we were not
8:32
Speaker 1: there during the time of the megalodon either. So our
8:35
Speaker 1: opening bit about standing on the beach watching them is
8:38
Speaker 1: was it was joked it's stanka bs just humor um.
8:41
Speaker 1: So dinosaurs were around from two hundred million years ago,
8:44
Speaker 1: just sixty five million years ago when the big asteroid hit,
8:49
Speaker 1: and then Megalodon was from twenty million years ago to
8:52
Speaker 1: about two million to one and a half million years ago.
8:55
Speaker 1: It seems like, so yeah, absolutely no overlap whatsoever. And
8:59
Speaker 1: I was just helping out a sixth grade class. Just
9:04
Speaker 1: so you mentioned before, these scientists were left with quite
9:07
Speaker 1: a task. It's not like finding of like a dinosaur
9:12
Speaker 1: U dinosaur's bones and saying, well, we can put it together.
9:15
Speaker 1: They didn't have a lot to go on with just
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Speaker 1: the center in the teeth. But they're much smarter than
9:19
Speaker 1: we are, so they were able to do so. Yes,
9:22
Speaker 1: And one of the things that the CenTra actually shows
9:25
Speaker 1: two is growth rings. Right, so just like a tree,
9:28
Speaker 1: sharks actually have a a signature of growth. I guess
9:33
Speaker 1: you'd call it like a tree ring on their center
9:36
Speaker 1: on these kind of vertebrae like structures. They get one
9:39
Speaker 1: every year every season when it changes from I think
9:42
Speaker 1: warm to cold, they get a little growth ring. And
9:46
Speaker 1: so um, if you're an ichthyologist or a paleontologist or
9:49
Speaker 1: a paleoich theologist specifically, Yeah, you could look at one
9:53
Speaker 1: of these things and be like, oh, well, this this
9:55
Speaker 1: megalodon lived to a hundred fifty years old because it's
9:59
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty rings. Yeah, and apparently, uh, wide
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Speaker 1: light rings means you grew faster as a megalodon and
10:07
Speaker 1: narrow dark rings means you grew a little slower. So
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Speaker 1: they can look at these growth rates in the Age
10:13
Speaker 1: of Death and just understand a little bit more about
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Speaker 1: the Great journey to extinction. So you too will understand
10:21
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the Great Journey to extinction
10:24
Speaker 1: right after these messages, so check. They found teeth, and
10:48
Speaker 1: they found teeth actually all over the world. There's there's
10:50
Speaker 1: a lot. It's an amazing amount of stuff that they
10:52
Speaker 1: were able to glean from just finding some teeth in
10:55
Speaker 1: some CenTra here um. And one of the things that
10:59
Speaker 1: they figured out from the teeth is that, wow, we
11:01
Speaker 1: found teeth all over the world, in Europe, in India
11:06
Speaker 1: and Japan, in North America, South America, Africa, Australia. Basically
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Speaker 1: they've been found around every continent except for Antarctica. And
11:15
Speaker 1: I would guess that if you could dig down through
11:18
Speaker 1: the ice sheets around Antarctica, you would probably find some
11:21
Speaker 1: megalodon teeth, yeah, because it was like very different a
11:24
Speaker 1: million years ago down there. As far as right now, Yeah,
11:27
Speaker 1: you'd like living in South Carolina. Nice coastal beach scene there.
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Speaker 1: Imagine the megalodon swimming around. That's exactly what happened in
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Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Um, some paleontologists from a a university
11:42
Speaker 1: in Florida. I'll just say that they very generous of you.
11:47
Speaker 1: They discovered some uh, some fossils. Uh. And these specifically
11:51
Speaker 1: were interesting because they were all little baby megalodons. It
11:56
Speaker 1: was a nursery. Yeah. And they discovered the same thing
11:58
Speaker 1: off the coast of South Carolina, which if you know
12:01
Speaker 1: how big something is when it dies, and you know
12:04
Speaker 1: how big it is when it's born, just add them
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Speaker 1: together and divide by two and you have a pretty
12:08
Speaker 1: good idea of what it's life was like. Uh. And
12:12
Speaker 1: when they were little babies, they were just twenty long.
12:16
Speaker 1: Yet that cute. They figured out did you say that
12:18
Speaker 1: that nurser was found in Panama for those researchers, Uh, yeah,
12:23
Speaker 1: And then then I think the other one is off
12:24
Speaker 1: South Carolina. So they figured out from these teeth that Um,
12:30
Speaker 1: the megalodon infant was as big as the normal size
12:35
Speaker 1: great white shark adult, like a pretty big great white. Yeah,
12:39
Speaker 1: that's like on the larger side. Yeah, that's amazing. Twenty
12:42
Speaker 1: ft long are the babies. That's like um, baby huey basically,
12:47
Speaker 1: but as a shark. So this means um, clearly, this
12:52
Speaker 1: is the apex predator of its time. Um, and it can. Well,
12:57
Speaker 1: it probably went everywhere because it could, but because nothing
13:00
Speaker 1: threatened it, you could eat. It could eat whatever it
13:02
Speaker 1: wanted to. And all things suggest that they had a
13:06
Speaker 1: lot of whales, balleen whales. They found teeth marks on
13:10
Speaker 1: whale bones. They even found teeth stuck in whale fossils.
13:14
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, pretty exciting. No, what happened there? They were
13:18
Speaker 1: in the middle of the meal when they got wiped
13:21
Speaker 1: out or they lost a tooth and it went down
13:24
Speaker 1: with the whale. Well it said teeth though, like maybe
13:27
Speaker 1: they just lost it, but maybe it was like me
13:30
Speaker 1: and it bit into the chicken bone started dropping teeth.
13:34
Speaker 1: Was that what happened? The chicken bone? The second one, Yeah,
13:39
Speaker 1: broke off at the Falcons game. It didn't hurt, right,
13:42
Speaker 1: You told us about that. It was so weird. I
13:44
Speaker 1: was like, well, my tooth just broken half okay, as
13:46
Speaker 1: long as didn't as long as it didn't hurt. And
13:49
Speaker 1: I went and sat back down to my seat and
13:50
Speaker 1: was just passed out from the pain that suddenly swarmed. No,
13:53
Speaker 1: there was no pain. The only pain was watching the
13:55
Speaker 1: falcons this season. Uh so they weighed between fifty a
14:00
Speaker 1: hundred tons and they could eat up to twenty hundred
14:04
Speaker 1: pounds of food a day. I love this. I love
14:08
Speaker 1: the comparison. I wasn't gonna do it. Okay, we won't
14:12
Speaker 1: go ahead. The author said, that's five hundred more pounds
14:16
Speaker 1: than the average American eats in a year. Just such
14:22
Speaker 1: a dumb comparison. But it's also hilarious in every way.
14:27
Speaker 1: I think good comparisons are one where it really hits
14:29
Speaker 1: home like that doesn't. So the author should have been like,
14:33
Speaker 1: that's fifty big max. Maybe that would have satisfied me
14:40
Speaker 1: times fifty Uh terrible. Um did we say, chuck? How big?
14:48
Speaker 1: The um? The mouth is based on these reconstructions. No,
14:51
Speaker 1: they put you know, how you see the big giant
14:54
Speaker 1: shark mouth. Sometimes it's from a real shark, and sometimes
14:57
Speaker 1: they just put it together. In this case, they put
14:59
Speaker 1: it together. Yeah, but the mouthful feature like real megalodon teeth.
15:03
Speaker 1: But the jaws, the bone jaws or cartlet shaws are
15:06
Speaker 1: obviously resin right. But you'll frequently see somebody standing in
15:10
Speaker 1: one of these and they're just dwarfed by it. And
15:12
Speaker 1: this is pretty accurate. Apparently they had it was reasonable
15:16
Speaker 1: for a megalodon to have a seven foot diameter, which
15:20
Speaker 1: is who knows how many meters to at least in
15:24
Speaker 1: diameter the mouth, and so like I saw this one.
15:28
Speaker 1: I think shark facts or something shark inside or some
15:31
Speaker 1: site was basically like, actually, if megalodon were alive today,
15:34
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to worry about it because it would
15:37
Speaker 1: be like you eating a cheese it and calling that
15:40
Speaker 1: a meal. They wouldn't even bother with you. I would
15:43
Speaker 1: not gamble that and swim around it, because even if
15:47
Speaker 1: it just opened its mouth, you'd just go right in. Well,
15:50
Speaker 1: we like cheese, it's exactly. Yeah. Uh, and if there's
15:55
Speaker 1: a whole box of humans, that megalodon would probably eat
15:58
Speaker 1: the whole thing, as a box of humans is called
16:01
Speaker 1: the school bus. That's right full circle. Oh my gosh, Chuck,
16:06
Speaker 1: So you talked a little earlier about the bite force. Um,
16:08
Speaker 1: this is a good comparison, I think because it does
16:11
Speaker 1: hit home. Um specialist, specialist. It's a weird thing to
16:15
Speaker 1: say experts. Experts, she means cardiologists. Yeah, experts and researchers
16:23
Speaker 1: say that a megala don's bite force was akin to
16:28
Speaker 1: us eating a grape, them eating a whale skull. So
16:31
Speaker 1: it could chomp through a whale skull the same as
16:33
Speaker 1: we could much do a grape, even those of us
16:36
Speaker 1: with fewer teeth. Yeah, and again it's not just the
16:39
Speaker 1: bite wasn't so bad just because there the teeth are
16:42
Speaker 1: so big and the the mouth was had such a
16:46
Speaker 1: wide diameter. It was designed basically to yeah, to crush,
16:51
Speaker 1: to disabled, to to disfigure in mame and pillage that
16:57
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. That's right. So yeah, it would be
16:59
Speaker 1: able to crush the skull very easily, and it did. Um.
17:02
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, the podcast art for this
17:05
Speaker 1: episode has a megaladon eating a whale Like it's nothing. Man,
17:11
Speaker 1: it's an artist's rendering. It's not a underwater photograph. But
17:17
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Nonetheless, you know, it's also cool is
17:21
Speaker 1: us taking a break? Oh yeah, so let's do that,
17:24
Speaker 1: and we'll come back and we'll finish up on the
17:26
Speaker 1: mighty micheladon Marldon stop. So how are these dudes? Remember
17:52
Speaker 1: one and a half to two million years to twenty
17:54
Speaker 1: million years is when they lived. I'm not sure how
17:58
Speaker 1: long they lived, and I'm not sure that ich theology
18:00
Speaker 1: just to paleoic theologists know yet. Well, I said, they
18:04
Speaker 1: guess they became distinct about two million years ago. No,
18:08
Speaker 1: I mean how long they lived in like the lifespans area,
18:12
Speaker 1: it was pretty big. I don't know. Well, I mean
18:15
Speaker 1: most large like whale, sharks and whales, they have long lives. Listen,
18:19
Speaker 1: one hunts them. But they think they went extinct a
18:22
Speaker 1: couple of million years ago during the Playo placed to
18:24
Speaker 1: scene period. And um, we actually featured an article just
18:30
Speaker 1: a few days ago about a new study on what
18:32
Speaker 1: they think caused the extinction because they used to think
18:36
Speaker 1: it had more to do with climate changes that they
18:39
Speaker 1: couldn't keep up with. Yeah, but um, I believe the
18:42
Speaker 1: same researchers who figured out the um or who found
18:46
Speaker 1: that Panamanian nursery. Um. Also we're the ones who conducted
18:51
Speaker 1: this study. Maybe not, but um, they they showed that
18:56
Speaker 1: the global ocean temperatures rose, was and um declined during
19:03
Speaker 1: this eighteen million year period where the megalodon was around,
19:07
Speaker 1: and they're still Megalodon. Yeah, their populations apparently didn't change.
19:11
Speaker 1: So they've basically said, no, we don't think it was
19:13
Speaker 1: temperature climate change that did it. We think it was
19:16
Speaker 1: a lack of diversity in the prey. Well, yeah, and
19:19
Speaker 1: I guess what you were talking about, like eating a human,
19:23
Speaker 1: Like you know, we'll say a human is six ft tall.
19:25
Speaker 1: That's still pretty large. And if that's not a cheese it,
19:29
Speaker 1: then you need to eat super large things and a
19:31
Speaker 1: lot of them. And you better hope those large things
19:35
Speaker 1: are successful at reproducing as well, because they go away,
19:38
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble. And they basically think that's what happened.
19:41
Speaker 1: The food sources became less diverse, and then smaller predators
19:46
Speaker 1: evolved and started competing and we should probably faster and
19:49
Speaker 1: better at hunting. And what happened by smaller they mean orcas. Yeah,
19:55
Speaker 1: like that's that that was their smaller competition for the
19:58
Speaker 1: same prey. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, and uh, who was it?
20:03
Speaker 1: The Zurix Paleontological Paleontological Institute in Museum they examined two
20:10
Speaker 1: hundred Megalodon records and came up with this new information,
20:14
Speaker 1: and they flat out said, changing climactic conditions do not
20:18
Speaker 1: appear to have had any influence. Yeah, they're like ocean hot,
20:22
Speaker 1: ocean cold. We love it either way. Yeah, And I
20:26
Speaker 1: mean if you if you're competing with an uh an
20:29
Speaker 1: organism or species that is going after the same prey
20:32
Speaker 1: but doesn't need as much as you to eat per day,
20:34
Speaker 1: you're going to lose evolutionarily speaking, that it could very
20:39
Speaker 1: easily be what it is. And because Megalodon, the recreations
20:43
Speaker 1: of them look a lot like um great whites, a
20:47
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, well, they're obviously great white ancestors.
20:50
Speaker 1: Apparently not. Apparently they are more closely related to mako sharks, right, yeah,
20:56
Speaker 1: mako sharks um and poor beagles sharks, although they would
21:00
Speaker 1: share some sort of relation to um Great whites because
21:04
Speaker 1: they would both be lamb uniforms. And the lamb niform
21:06
Speaker 1: is a shark with two dorsal fins, five gill slits
21:09
Speaker 1: in the mouth that extends back beyond the eyes, so
21:12
Speaker 1: they can smile real wide after they eat a whole
21:14
Speaker 1: boat full of people. So I was about to do
21:17
Speaker 1: the Jaws line. Smile you son of a Um. We
21:22
Speaker 1: should shout out Gordon Hubble. He's a megalodon expert who
21:26
Speaker 1: uh he had his theory now I think it's cool.
21:29
Speaker 1: He had his theory about the food source before. Uh,
21:33
Speaker 1: it officially came out when everyone else was going and
21:36
Speaker 1: now it was the climate. He actually theorized this beforehand.
21:39
Speaker 1: So good on you, sir. Um. He's the same guy
21:42
Speaker 1: who says no, no, no, there's no such thing as
21:46
Speaker 1: this megalodon still right, Yeah, because we should do one
21:50
Speaker 1: on cryptozoology as a whole. Um. There are people out
21:53
Speaker 1: there that want to believe that somewhere in the depths
21:56
Speaker 1: of the ocean and the deepest, darkest corners that we
21:59
Speaker 1: have explored, that there are these giant beasts still living, right,
22:03
Speaker 1: And actually they make great points. I mean, look at
22:06
Speaker 1: the Ceila canth. We thought the silic canth went extinct,
22:08
Speaker 1: and then it was caught off the coast of Africa
22:11
Speaker 1: um in the thirties I think South Africa, UM, and
22:15
Speaker 1: we realized, wow, this thing hasn't been extinct for a
22:17
Speaker 1: couple of hundred million years. And then in the seventies
22:20
Speaker 1: they found the megamouth shark, which is a here to
22:23
Speaker 1: four unknown shark species that fed on plankton deep deep
22:28
Speaker 1: deep in the ocean, and they caught one off of Hawaiian.
22:30
Speaker 1: They're like, this is new. So crypto zoologist point to
22:33
Speaker 1: these things and they say, how can you say that
22:36
Speaker 1: there definitely is no um megalodons out there still? And
22:41
Speaker 1: I think that same guy who you shouted out to says, well,
22:45
Speaker 1: here's why, because the the megamouth shark um, which is
22:50
Speaker 1: a plant eater, lives in this part of the ocean
22:53
Speaker 1: where we just don't tread. We're just now developing the
22:56
Speaker 1: technology to be able to go down there, so our
22:59
Speaker 1: path wouldn't really cross. A megalodon would have the same
23:03
Speaker 1: type of habitat that a regular shark has coastal regions, right,
23:08
Speaker 1: so we definitely would have noticed a megalodon by now,
23:12
Speaker 1: even if there was just one left in the whole world,
23:14
Speaker 1: we probably would have encountered it by now because our
23:17
Speaker 1: our habitats overlap a little bit. Then a sela can't.
23:21
Speaker 1: Isn't the size of a school bus in fairness. Yeah,
23:24
Speaker 1: So he kind of did a mic drop explanations and
23:29
Speaker 1: um that they haven't found any megalodon teeth that are
23:33
Speaker 1: not fossils, even though some people have claimed that, uh,
23:36
Speaker 1: it's all bs. Yeah, can we say that safely? I
23:39
Speaker 1: don't know. I think so. But that's not to say
23:42
Speaker 1: that some people haven't made great hay out of this stuff,
23:44
Speaker 1: including a guy named, um, what is that named Steve Alton.
23:50
Speaker 1: He wrote a series of books called meg about a
23:52
Speaker 1: megalodon that likes to battle people and dinosaurs and stuff
23:56
Speaker 1: and it's great fun. And then of course there's Mega
23:58
Speaker 1: Shark Versus Giant Octopus. Have you seen that? No? I
24:03
Speaker 1: haven't either, but Debbie Gibson was in it apparently, Well
24:07
Speaker 1: sign me up. And then there is a sequel to it,
24:09
Speaker 1: um called Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus. Yeah, Tiffany, isn't that actually?
24:14
Speaker 1: Rkle Oh right, Julia White, good for him, and well,
24:21
Speaker 1: I guess we got to talk about the elephant in
24:23
Speaker 1: the room. Discovery Channel a couple of years ago, uh,
24:28
Speaker 1: Discovery Channel, our our former bosses. They aired a show
24:34
Speaker 1: um to kick off Shark Week about the megaladon that
24:39
Speaker 1: was had the look of a documentary. Um, if you
24:45
Speaker 1: didn't know any better, you would think it was real,
24:48
Speaker 1: where they claimed the Megaladon was real, and that it
24:51
Speaker 1: was um killing people off the coast of South Africa,
24:55
Speaker 1: and it was this giant beast uh sixty seven ft long,
24:59
Speaker 1: nickname a submarine and it's terrorizing humans and it was
25:03
Speaker 1: called Megalodon. The monster shark lives. Um. They to put
25:09
Speaker 1: it lightly, came under a little bit of fire from
25:13
Speaker 1: the viewing public, most notably, well, not most notably, but
25:16
Speaker 1: notably Will Wheaton. Uh, I don't know if we'll still
25:19
Speaker 1: listen to our show, but at one point he did listening.
25:22
Speaker 1: He was a friend of the show. Um. He wrote
25:24
Speaker 1: a blog post which I'm so glad he did that.
25:28
Speaker 1: He said a lot of things, but one of the
25:30
Speaker 1: things he said was Discovery had a chance to get
25:33
Speaker 1: its audience thinking about what the oceans were like when
25:35
Speaker 1: the Megalodon roamed and hunted in them, and had a
25:38
Speaker 1: chance to even show what could possibly happen if there
25:40
Speaker 1: were something that large and predatoring the ocean today. But
25:43
Speaker 1: Discovery Channel did not do that, and the cynical point
25:45
Speaker 1: for ratings the network deliberately lied to its audience and
25:48
Speaker 1: presented fiction as fact. They've betrayed its audience. UH. During
25:53
Speaker 1: its biggest viewing week of the year and Discovery channels
25:56
Speaker 1: that run by stupid people. This was not a mistake.
25:59
Speaker 1: Someone may to deliberate choice to present a work of
26:01
Speaker 1: fiction more suited for sci fi channel as truthful and factual.
26:05
Speaker 1: That is disgusting. Whoever made that decision should be ashamed.
26:09
Speaker 1: I was mad he got up on his uh hobby horse,
26:13
Speaker 1: rightfully so, and called him out. Sure, not a hobby horse.
26:18
Speaker 1: And here's the deal. After the show airs, they have
26:22
Speaker 1: their uh what do you call it when you put
26:26
Speaker 1: a disclaimer. Yeah, well they're sure they had a party
26:29
Speaker 1: because it was huge in the ratings. But it said
26:31
Speaker 1: none of the institutions or agencies that appear in the
26:33
Speaker 1: film are affiliated with it in any way, nor have
26:35
Speaker 1: approved its contents. Uh, those certain events and characters in
26:39
Speaker 1: this film have been dramatized. Sightings of Submarine continue to
26:43
Speaker 1: this day, which is total bs. Well, no, there are
26:47
Speaker 1: a lot of people crackpots. To this day, there are
26:52
Speaker 1: sightings or whatever, and Megalodon was a real shark. Legends
26:56
Speaker 1: of giant shark persist all over the world. There's still
26:58
Speaker 1: debate about what they may be. So basically people were
27:04
Speaker 1: like Twitter lit up on fire. People went crazy and said,
27:08
Speaker 1: Shark Week has jumped the shark officially, like you're airing
27:12
Speaker 1: fiction is fact. And they came out a year after that.
27:16
Speaker 1: Last year, I guess two years later, uh and the
27:19
Speaker 1: new brand, the brand new chief Rich Ross Cross Rich
27:24
Speaker 1: Ross uh and said, you know what, We're not gonna
27:28
Speaker 1: do things like eating alive. Remember when they were gonna
27:30
Speaker 1: have the snake eat the guy. Oh yeah, I forgot
27:33
Speaker 1: about that. That was just a huge stain on their brand.
27:37
Speaker 1: So we're not gonna do things like the Mermaids documentary
27:40
Speaker 1: and the Megalodon documentary. What are they gonna do? He
27:43
Speaker 1: said they were gonna try and get back to you know,
27:46
Speaker 1: educational programming. So how have they done that yet? When
27:49
Speaker 1: when did he say that? This is uh? And I
27:53
Speaker 1: think he wanted to make a push to sort of
27:54
Speaker 1: be the leader once again and smart educational programming and
27:58
Speaker 1: not keep ratings boys. So we'll see nice. Um. Yeah.
28:04
Speaker 1: The last thing I've got is if you love Megalodons
28:07
Speaker 1: and you have a lot of money, you can buy
28:09
Speaker 1: a Megalodon tooth for about bucks. I wondered about that
28:14
Speaker 1: hundred Semolean boy, I would be worried that things fake. Yeah,
28:22
Speaker 1: although I mean, like, if you look online, it'd be
28:24
Speaker 1: tough to fake one. No one, all right, I mean
28:27
Speaker 1: maybe to the discerning eye. But someone can make a
28:30
Speaker 1: fake one and show me right now, and it's say
28:31
Speaker 1: it looks real to me. Look at this? Maybe too,
28:35
Speaker 1: Maybe the artists shouldn't have signed the bottom. Yeah, right,
28:40
Speaker 1: that's it. I got nothing else megalodon. If you want
28:43
Speaker 1: to know more about those, you can type that word
28:46
Speaker 1: in the search bar. How stuff first dot com. And
28:48
Speaker 1: since I said that, it's time for listener mate, I'm
28:53
Speaker 1: gonna call this another one for the Equal pay Day
28:56
Speaker 1: episode because we've got something a little wrong we want
28:59
Speaker 1: to clear up. Um, whenever you guys touch on hey guys,
29:02
Speaker 1: big fan, whenever you guys touch on sensitive topics, I'm
29:05
Speaker 1: always a little worried. Is this going to be the
29:07
Speaker 1: time they say something that makes me have to stop listening? No?
29:11
Speaker 1: What you never do? Um? And this is from Ellen
29:14
Speaker 1: and she says, uh, you guys mentioned that in the
29:17
Speaker 1: US women are guaranteed twelve weeks of paid leave. I
29:20
Speaker 1: have to take that one. I said that. Okay, I'm
29:23
Speaker 1: assuming you're talking about the Family Medical Leave Act. I
29:26
Speaker 1: wanted to point out a few strict qualifications, though that
29:30
Speaker 1: don't apply to everyone. Uh. You must work for a
29:33
Speaker 1: public agency, including state, local, and federal employers and local
29:37
Speaker 1: education agencies like schools, or a private sector private sector
29:42
Speaker 1: employer to employee fifty or more employees for at least
29:45
Speaker 1: twenty work weeks in the current proceding calendar year, including
29:49
Speaker 1: joint employers and successors covered employees. And I had a
29:53
Speaker 1: nice exchange with some lady who this woman who had
29:56
Speaker 1: to quit her job and she got pregnant because it
29:59
Speaker 1: was under fifty employees. And she and I both conceded,
30:02
Speaker 1: like we kind of get it. If you have a
30:04
Speaker 1: really small business and you have eight employees and four
30:08
Speaker 1: of them get pregnant, you're kind of screwed employees. Yeah,
30:12
Speaker 1: And she was like, yeah, I get that, you know stuff.
30:14
Speaker 1: And she said, you know, people should sort of think
30:17
Speaker 1: about these things when they're going to get a job.
30:19
Speaker 1: A woman, if they want to have a baby, maybe
30:22
Speaker 1: go to a place that does have the f m
30:24
Speaker 1: l A qualify qualification. UM. So she, you know, she
30:30
Speaker 1: she got both sides of the issue. I so thought
30:32
Speaker 1: that was nice. UM. Also an employements work for a
30:36
Speaker 1: covered employer and have worked for that employee for at
30:40
Speaker 1: least twelve months and have worked for at least twelve
30:43
Speaker 1: d and fifty hours during that twelve months, and work
30:47
Speaker 1: at a location where at least fifty employees are employed
30:49
Speaker 1: at the location or within seventy five miles. So just
30:53
Speaker 1: more specificity there. Thank you for that, Yeah, she said,
30:57
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to call you guys out. I know
30:58
Speaker 1: a lot of people listen to your show up, and
31:00
Speaker 1: I think it's important to everyone understands how little support
31:03
Speaker 1: parents do have in terms of leave. We're way behind
31:06
Speaker 1: the rest of the world and it's not something we
31:08
Speaker 1: should be proud of. She said. We're only one of
31:11
Speaker 1: only seven countries in the world that doesn't have paid
31:15
Speaker 1: parential leave because it is also unpaid. So come on
31:19
Speaker 1: us get together. Yeah, and I'm sorry for miss speaking,
31:22
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's right. Also, my eyes are open, like
31:25
Speaker 1: I definitely didn't know all that for sure. Yeah, and
31:28
Speaker 1: I feel super lucky now because our company, Davis paid
31:31
Speaker 1: leave paternal and maternal leave, which I now realize is
31:36
Speaker 1: super generous. Yeah, it's pretty cool to how about that. Yeah,
31:39
Speaker 1: and you took it too, like a chance. Yeah, and
31:42
Speaker 1: that is from Ellen. Thanks a lot, Ellen. If you
31:45
Speaker 1: want to get in touch of this for any reason,
31:46
Speaker 1: we would love that. Just go ahead and tweet to
31:49
Speaker 1: us at s y s K podcast are joined the
31:51
Speaker 1: fun on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
31:54
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31:56
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
31:58
Speaker 1: at our home on the win Stuff you Should dot com.
32:06
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
32:09
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