#Otodus megalodon

[gingericywolf]

Cattolica Aquarium

5.08.2024

Dinosaurs and an intruder.

You are in the wrong time placement sir Megalodon

[saint-nevermore]

a goliath shark preying on a juvenile serpent. in Nevverse, Otodus megalodon exists in some seas and primarily preys on other large predators like dragons and whales.

(this is a piece of work for a fantasy setting and not intended to be 100% accurate!)

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

A piece from the #MonkeyCruise series, in which I take classic pieces from art history and replace humans with extinct primates and alter the scenes accordingly.

Here it's Mesopithecus witnessing a beached Otodus megalodon.

[cheecats]

Last thing you see after hurting one of her awful little brats that 100% deserved it

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

In 2010 I painted a Miocene scene staring Otodus megalodon. Unfortunately, I've lost the names of the other illustrated species, but there is a smaller shark species, a small toothed whale, and an early baleen whale.

[howlingday]

Extinct?Faunus Jaune

Idea is courtesy of @unknowdude34

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Kasai Rex!Faunus Jaune

Jaune: I'll see you guys later.

Ruby: Huh? Where are you going?

Jaune: I'm gonna go eat in my room.

Nora: We can do that?

Weiss: Sit down and eat, you antisocial buffoon!

Jaune: ...Okay.

Cardin: I'm telling you, I know what I saw! There was something by the pool last night, tearing apart something huge!

Russel: Cardin, I normally believe ya, but it just sounds too weird.

Dove: Yeah, like, a deer carcass in the pool? Pretty sure we'd get an announcement about that.

Lark: Not to mention the crocodile you saw eating it.

Cardin: That wasn't a crocodile! It was... It was something else! Something out of a horror film!

Jaune: (Cutting off the legs on his nuggies, Wishing he could eat in private)

Fun Fact! In 1933, in the African Kasai Valley, a hunter named John Johnson took a photo of an alleged dinosaur while hunting elephants. The elephants he intended to shoot were in fact hunted by a bipedal creature with red scales and black stripes. He shot this creature, but it retreated. On his return to camp, he found the creature again eating a rhinoceros near the water.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Percetus Colossus!Faunus Jaune

Nora: WOW! You are HUGE!

Jaune: Um, h-hi... I'm Jaune.

Nora: Where were you on the bullhead?! How'd you even fit?!

Ren: Nora, please.

Jaune: They, uh... They had to call in another bullhead for me.

Fun Fact! A recently discovered early whale, the basilosaurid Perucetus Colossus has the heaviest animal bone mass to have ever been discovered, even outsizing the giant Blue Whale.

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Sperm Whale!Faunus Jaune Arc & Shark!Faunus Yang Xiao Long & Leviathan Melvillei!Faunus Papa Arc & Otodus Megalodon!Faunus Raven Branwen

Jaune: Just you and me, Yang.

Yang: Yeah... Only one of us can be the top fighter in this ring, and it's gonna be me.

Pyrrha: Why are those two always fighting?

Blake: For as long as I've known Yang, she and Jaune have always been fighting. It might even date back to their ancestors.

Meanwhile...

Papa Arc: Make the first move, Branwen...

Raven: Hmph! Ladies first, Arc...

Fun Fact! Leviathan Melvillei is an ancient ancestor of the sperm whale, equipped with teeth on it's top AND bottom jaw. It is argued whether it hunted Megalodon, were hunted by it, or simply competed would attack the other given the opportunity. The third is the often agreed upon consensus.

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Giganotosaurus!Faunus Jaune & Tyrannosaurus!Faunus Saphron

Saphron: I took a test today! I aced it!

Mama Arc: Well done, Saphron! And how did you do, Jaune?

Jaune: Uh... W-Well, I think I'm improving, but-

Mama Arc: Jaune...

Jaune: ...I got a D+.

Fun Fact! Giganotosaurus is thought to be the largest theropod dinosaur discovered. However, despite have a much larger skull, and internal model of the brain casing shows that it may have had a smaller brain than the Tyrannosaurus.

[tff-praefectus]

Otodus obliquus shark tooth

[aberrantologist]

Two gulls follow a weird fish. Featuring the newly elongated Otodus megalodon.

[saritawolff]

Patreon request for rome.and.stuff (Instagram), and my first plesiosaur (well, first since I was like… 10)

Pliosaurus funkei!

Pliosaurs were a family of plesiosaurs that eventually lost their stereotypical long-necked, small-headed body plan. Resembling the mosasaurs that would come much later, pliosaurs had short necks with large, strong jaws, and fed on fish, cephalopods, and marine reptiles. The type genus, Pliosaurus, contains at least 6 species. The first and type species, P. brachydeirus, was described and named by Sir Richard Owen in 1841.

Between 2004 and 2012, a new species of Pliosaurus was in the process of being uncovered. Before it was formally described or even named, news of this giant sea monster escaped into the general media and it was dubbed “Predator X”.

This Predator X prompted a media frenzy… there were articles estimating its size based on the fragments found so far, a 2009 television special on the History channel, and a segment in the 2011 BBC documentary series “Planet Dinosaur.”

Predator X was reportedly the “most fearsome animal ever to swim in the oceans!”

When Pliosaurus funkei was finally formally described and named in 2012, it was found to be a bit smaller than the giant 15 meter long estimate being thrown around. However, it was still a very large animal, around 10–12 m (33–39 ft) long with a 2.0–2.5 m (6.6–8.2 ft) long skull. It also had very long flippers, probably to aid in maneuverability and speed. Analysis of Pliosaurus funkei’s skeleton show that it likely used its front flippers to cruise, only using its back flippers for quick bursts of speed when pursuing prey. Analysis of its brain case shows that its brain was proportional to that of a modern great white shark. So while it didn’t quite beat the Late Cretaceous 12–15.8 meter (39–52 ft) long mosasaur Tylosaurus, the Early Miocene to Late Pliocene 10.5-20.3 meter (34-67 ft) long shark Otodus megalodon, or even the modern day 11-16 meter (36-52 ft) long Physeter macrocephalus (Sperm Whale), it was still no doubt the apex predator of its time and environment.

Pliosaurus funkei lived in the last era of the Late Jurassic in the icy waters of Norway. Found in the Slottsmøya Member of the Agardhfjellet Formation, it would have lived in a cold, shallow sea rife with methane seeps. These methane seeps supported a high amount of diversity, and the Slottsmøya was teeming with ammonites, bivalves, gastropods, brachiopods, tubeworms, echinoderms, cold water sponges, and more. Many icthyosaurs and plesiosaurs would have enjoyed feeding on the plentiful invertebrates here, as well as each other. Pliosaurus funkei would have likely fed on other plesiosaurs like Colymbosaurus, Djupedalia, Ophthalmothule, and Spitrasaurus, as well as icthyosaurs like Cryopterygius, Undorosaurus, Arthropterygius, Nannopterygius, and Brachypterygius.

[iamthekaijuking]

suaropods on earth are the absolute upper limit for land vertebrates, but is it because they have four legs? cause i was working on a scifi spec evo idea where the endoskeletal vertebrate-analogs have eight legs and it got me wondering if it means their sauropod equivalents can be even bigger in a similar earth like gravity

If it was just about leg numbers then land mammals wouldn’t be smaller than the biggest dinosaurs

In reality you need specific evolutionary pressures, circumstances, and unique and efficient anatomy to get big.

For sauropods it was entirely due to their internal anatomy. Sauropods are saurischian dinosaurs, which have hollow bones with internal scaffolding that likely made them stronger than if they were solid, as well as a very extensive respiratory system that included numerous air sacks, many of which ran through their bones. This ultimately allowed saurischian dinosaurs to massively cut back on volume and allow them to cool off easier and have more efficient respiration. There’s things we still don’t know about sauropod anatomy though such as how their circulatory systems combated their sheer verticality. Dinosaurs also have unidirectional respiratory systems, which is more efficient than mammalian two way airflow.

For modern baleen whales it has more to do with the aftermath of the last ice age and how it impacted the location of their food (keep in mind this explanation of the evolution of baleen whale size is based on my current understanding and might not be correct). Baleen whales actually used to be much smaller, around bus size. But during and after the last ice age the ocean currents changed and krill populations became concentrated around the poles. Because of this, baleen whales needed a way to eat as much as possible in one sitting and travel long distances efficiently. The easy solution was to get big, which became easier as their predators the macroraptorial sperm whales and Otodus megalodon gradually went extinct. A thing to note however, is that because they need more resources due to their size, the number of baleen whale species is lower than it was several million years ago. Also also, blue whales are getting bigger.

On earth, 200 tons is more or less the maximum size for animals, as the biggest whales, ichthyosaurs, and sauropods got around that size.

There’s more things to note though:

No, higher oxygen levels don’t make things bigger. Not even bugs. Modern arthropods are actually on average bigger than their Carboniferous counterparts, and the oxygen levels were way higher back then. And griffinflies, very active flying insects, lasted all the way into the Permian, when oxygen levels were lower than in modern day.

It’s important to consider what the bones of animals are made of as well as their structure. Different internal structures can handle stress better, and different materials can handle pressure differently.

Eight legs might be too many, as having more legs, while very stable, can be more energy costly. Two legs might not be able to support as much weight as four, but it is more efficient.

A very big thing animals have to fight with when it comes to size is something called the square cube law. Basically as something gets bigger its volume (insides) increase way faster than its outsides (surface area). If you had a 1 centimeter cube and doubled its size, the surface area would quadruple but the insides would increase eight times. But there are ways of combating this such as decreasing volume with things like air sacks or increasing surface area by being very wrinkly (that’s how human brains fit so many neurons!). And because things with a metabolism generate heat, big animals have to combat overheating because they have a lot of insides. That’s why elephants have such big vascularized ears and why their skin acts like a sponge to soak up water.

Also I have no idea how perucetus got so big, that glorious fatass

[makairodonx]

“In the course of twenty million years, mammals got more and more successful until they were the biggest, fiercest, and most spectacular animals on the planet. Whatever the climate, whatever the habitat, mammals made it their own. Their great strength was their ability to adapt. They grew to gigantic sizes, they evolved into powerful killers like the famous sabre-tooth cats, and they even laid claim to the oceans.”

- Kenneth Branagh, prologue to “Walking with Beasts”

Sketches of some of the incredible wildlife of the Cenozoic Era. None of the animals are exactly shown to scale. From left to right, bottom to top:

Arctocyon, Barylambda, Coryphodon, Titanoboa

Uintatherium, Notharctus, Mesonyx, Eobasileus

Leptictidium, Gastornis, Propaleotherium, Titanomyra, Godinotia, Pakicetus, Ambulocetus

Apidium, Arsinotitherium, Andrewsarchus, Embolotherium, Moeritherium, Dorudon, Basilosaurus, Perucetus

Megacerops, Cainotherium, Merycoidodon

Cynodictis, Paraceratherium, Hyaenodon gigas, Chalicotherium, Paraentelodon

Gentilicamelus, Amphicyon, Daeodon, Moropus, Dinocrocuta, Platybelodon, Gomphotherium, Pelagornis, Purussasaurus, Odobenoceratops, Otodus megalodon

Phoruschracos, Astrapotherium, Teleoceras, Synthetoceras, Samotherium, Livyatan

Australopithecus afarensis, Deinotherium, Ancylotherium, Dinofelis

Mammuthus columbi, Smilodon fatalis, Bison latifrons, Aenocyon dirus, Arctodus simus, Panthera atrox, Titanotylopus, Equus hersternus, Sivatherium, Gigantopithecus, Paleoloxodon

Smilodon populator, Macrauchenia, Doedicurus, Megatherium, Glyptodon, Toxodon

Mammuthus primigenius, Megaloceros giganteus, Coelodonta antiquitatis, Bos primigenius, Homo neanderthalensis, Elasmotherium, Bison bonasus

[animaraptor]

Paleocard come back! This post will not wery intresting, becouse it's about paleofossils, not animal reconstructions.

So, we have:

1) Tooth of Megalodon dad - Otodus

2) Body of some goofy precarbian animal - Dickinsonia

3) Earilest know feather from Trias - Praeornis

4) And finaly - some "scales" of Glyptodon shell

Next will be Jokers!

[dynamoterror1011]

Tonight’s flocking-together paleostream sketches, Shark week themed.

Top-left is a Thrinacoselache nibbling on a time-traveler’s lost Blåhaj plushie, top-right is a trio of Aquilolamna escorting a Terminonaris, bottom-left is a far-off Otodus megalodon being sucked into the gigantic Zanclean flood, and bottom-right is a Squalicorax, gorged with food, being followed by a young Tylosaurus.

[dragonthunders01]

After making the reconstruction of O. megalodon it was necessary to complete the pack of titanic miocene marine predators, and from the coast of Peru, Livyatan rises up as one of the biggest raptorial sperm whales known with the holotype only formed by a large head of almost 3 meters in length.

And also the usual comparison size with its eternal marine foe, the big head shark, which seems that these were common on Pisco. Probably Livyatan evaded large Otodus bulls in order to avoid lethal confrontation or just gathered in groups like modern cetaceans. I'm a little cautious about its body size as range of length estimations have been very variable depending of body model, in this situation as I explained in the chart I picked a more conservative recontruction considering the proportions of other raptorial sperm whale, at least until some postcranial material that can be referred to this genus is found

[cheecats]

Aaaand all The Divers are done!

Born just over a year after the second litter, these two are the baby brothers of the group and mark the final of Otodus' litters.

Otodus planned to have another litter following, but contracted feline panleukopenia virus over halfway through pregnancy and became gravely ill. She ended up being taken by the owners of her partner at the time, Roman, upon his pleading for her to go to the vet, leaving The Hammerhead Shark as the de facto leader for two and a half moons. She was treated, then later spayed, and kept confined to the owner's nest for recovery. She returned one day without explanation with her two young kits in toe. Roman was not in company. The circumstances of these two's births is a sore topic amidst The Divers, Otodus becoming quick to anger if there is any reference to Roman or her sickness & recovery. Any facts within are ancient history.

The Nurse Shark has a dynamic range of expertise, usually growing bored of his job roles and squeezing into another when he gets the chance. He has some medical and craft knowledge, but currently (and with the greatest longevity) has taken to food preparation and cooking for the group. While he knows how, he isn't confident swimming, preferring to stick to the shore or boats built by the group. He's probably the most "normal" of The Divers, although that's not saying much…

and The Great White Shark. My main guy. Debatably the WORST of The Divers. A violent asshole who sees the world as his playground, he's honestly just here for a good time. But his use to the group with strength, hunting and aquatic prowess are undeniable. Most of his siblings are at least somewhat uneasy around him, and for good reason.

DIRECTORY:

[Captain Otodus]

[Otodus' First Litter]

[Otodus' Second Litter]

[Otodus' Third Litter]

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

In 2010 I painted a Miocene scene staring Otodus megalodon. Unfortunately, I've lost the names of the other illustrated species, but there is a smaller shark species, a small toothed whale, and an early baleen whale.