Megalodon vs Livyatan

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Megalodon (Otodus megalodon),[6][7][8] meaning "big tooth", is an extinct species of mackerel shark that lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago (Mya), from the Early Miocene to the Pliocene epochs.[9] It was formerly thought to be a member of the family Lamnidae and a close relative of the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). However, it is now classified into the extinct family Otodontidae, which diverged from the great white shark during the Early Cretaceous.
While regarded as one of the largest and most powerful predators to have ever lived, the megalodon is only known from fragmentary remains, and its appearance and maximum size are uncertain.

Livyatan is an extinct genus of macroraptorial sperm whale containing one known species: L. melvillei. The genus name was inspired by the biblical sea monster Leviathan, and the species name by Herman Melville, the author of the famous novel Moby-Dick about a white bull sperm whale. It is mainly known from the Pisco Formation of Peru during the Tortonian stage of the Miocene epoch, about 9.9–8.9 million years ago (mya); however, finds of isolated teeth from other locations such as Chile, Argentina, South Africa, and Australia imply that either it or a close relative survived into the Pliocene, around 5 mya, and was present throughout the Southern Hemisphere. It was a member of a group of macroraptorial sperm whales (or "raptorial sperm whales") and was probably an apex predator, preying on whales, seals, and so forth. Characteristically of raptorial sperm whales, Livyatan had functional, enamel-coated teeth on the upper and lower jaws, as well as several features suitable for hunting large prey.

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Well, evidently Livyatan was a giant sperm whale. I think it would intelligently pick apart Megalodon, not sure I buy prehistoric animals being stupid. I think it was comparable to modern sperm whales. What do you think @ling?
If they ended up trading blows Livyatan loses but I highly doubt Livyatan would let that happen.

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Dec 29, 2022 0:26:31 GMT Bolushi said:

Well, evidently Livyatan was a giant sperm whale. I think it would intelligently pick apart Megalodon, not sure I buy prehistoric animals being stupid. I think it was comparable to modern sperm whales. What do you think @ling?
If they ended up trading blows Livyatan loses but I highly doubt Livyatan would let that happen.

palaeo-electronica.org/content/2021/3284-estimating-lamniform-body-size

"The most recent estimate with the least error range suggests a maximum length estimate up to 20 meters (66 ft), although the modal lengths are estimated at 10.5 meters (34 ft)."

If Megalodon could truly reach 20 meters and 103 tons then this is a no-brainer.

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Dec 29, 2022 3:19:01 GMT @ling said:

Dec 29, 2022 0:26:31 GMT Bolushi said:

Well, evidently Livyatan was a giant sperm whale. I think it would intelligently pick apart Megalodon, not sure I buy prehistoric animals being stupid. I think it was comparable to modern sperm whales. What do you think @ling ?
If they ended up trading blows Livyatan loses but I highly doubt Livyatan would let that happen.

palaeo-electronica.org/content/2021/3284-estimating-lamniform-body-size

"The most recent estimate with the least error range suggests a maximum length estimate up to 20 meters (66 ft), although the modal lengths are estimated at 10.5 meters (34 ft)."

If Megalodon could truly reach 20 meters and 103 tons then this is a no-brainer.

Well now we know that it couldn't hide from us if it was still alive... lol, maybe an 100ft shark is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench stealthily evading us.

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I saw that linksharing.samsungcloud.com/contents/view?contentsToken=1672284065031L0qwX9s¤tIndex=1&linkUrlVersion=V1

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Dec 29, 2022 3:26:42 GMT Bolushi said:

I saw that linksharing.samsungcloud.com/contents/view?contentsToken=1672284065031L0qwX9s¤tIndex=1&linkUrlVersion=V1

Yeah it's big.

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Hardcastle  oldgreengrolar  @ajay  etc, thoughts?

[Hardcastle]

I'd tend to lean towards the cetacean, especially if this is accurate-

And personally I tend to think it is. At best for megalodon IMO.
I think the upper guesstimates for such animals are always gonna be over the top, even the top scientists just get way too hyped for them and carried away.
If something seems stupidly OP, it is. It had to have been in balance with it's environment and it's co-inhabitants. That means its prey actually got the better of it and thwarted it's attacks most of the time, somehow. How? I imagine it can't have been as fast and manuveurable as people imagine, like an upscaled great white that can move and behave the same... I don't think so.

That said, livyatan can't have been very manuveurable either.

Both intriguing monstrous animals. For the record my favourite extinct sea monsters are pliosaurs. Unfortunately I'm not sure any got big enough to actually contend with these guys. Not sure. Pliosaurus Funkei possibly got close. 

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Dec 29, 2022 17:45:04 GMT Hardcastle said:

I'd tend to lean towards the cetacean, especially if this is accurate-

And personally I tend to think it is. At best for megalodon IMO.
I think the upper guesstimates for such animals are always gonna be over the top, even the top scientists just get way too hyped for them and carried away.
If something seems stupidly OP, it is. It had to have been in balance with it's environment and it's co-inhabitants. That means its prey actually got the better of it and thwarted it's attacks most of the time, somehow. How? I imagine it can't have been as fast and manuveurable as people imagine, like an upscaled great white that can move and behave the same... I don't think so.

That said, livyatan can't have been very manuveurable either.

Both intriguing monstrous animals. For the record my favourite extinct sea monsters are pliosaurs. Unfortunately I'm not sure any got big enough to actually contend with these guys. Not sure. Pliosaurus Funkei possibly got close. 

They're out-dated (my study was published in 2021)
.

[Hardcastle]

It seems either unlikely it got that big regardless of what some overzealous scientists say, OR, if it did, it must have sucked really bad in some way. Been majorly sluggish like a whale shark perhaps.
You need to remember the animals that coexisted with it could do so while living full successful lives and breeding, with only the duds being picked off- the young, the old, the sick, the injured, etc etc. The prime specimens of it's prey could comfortably evade it somehow and thwart it's predation attempts.

I always cringe a little at depictions of super predators for this reason. Whether megalodon or t-rex or even my beloved pliosaurs, or even tigers, grizzlies or wolves. So often their fans will talk about how "easily" they decimate their prey and that's literally never true in nature. Every predator struggles and spends most of their time failing while their prey mosies off at leisure laughing at them. That's a predator's 9 to 5 occupation- humiliation and failure, scattered with rare triumphs.

Therefore I don't let myself get excited about t-rex or megalodon or etc because their apparent strengths were evidently counterbalanced by weaknesses, and those must be some pretty dramatic weaknesses to nerf such impressive super monsters and make them real animals in harmony with nature.

If I was a meg fan I'd want to believe it is smaller rather than larger, because the bigger it is the slower and more incompetent it must have been to not have cleansed the ocean of all whales.
Whales have one calf and take a loooong time to gestate it and an even longer time to raise it. All through that time and then through that calf's life up to breeding age a good portion of whales had to be fending off megalodon attacks to make their species viable. If meg was ANYTHING like what they say, anthing like this-

How on earth could whales even exist in that universe? It's absurdity and not a realistic animal, not as portrayed. In reality it had to be a much more humble, grounded and flawed predator. Ditto for T-rex.

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Dec 29, 2022 17:45:04 GMT Hardcastle said:

I'd tend to lean towards the cetacean, especially if this is accurate-

And personally I tend to think it is. At best for megalodon IMO.
I think the upper guesstimates for such animals are always gonna be over the top, even the top scientists just get way too hyped for them and carried away.
If something seems stupidly OP, it is. It had to have been in balance with it's environment and it's co-inhabitants. That means its prey actually got the better of it and thwarted it's attacks most of the time, somehow. How? I imagine it can't have been as fast and manuveurable as people imagine, like an upscaled great white that can move and behave the same... I don't think so.

That said, livyatan can't have been very manuveurable either.

Both intriguing monstrous animals. For the record my favourite extinct sea monsters are pliosaurs. Unfortunately I'm not sure any got big enough to actually contend with these guys. Not sure. Pliosaurus Funkei possibly got close. 

For the record my favourite extinct sea monsters are pliosaurs. Unfortunately I'm not sure any got big enough to actually contend with these guys.

Even Sachicasaurus falls short. “In 2022 Gregory S. Paul estimated a total length of 10.8 metres (35 ft) and a weight of 13.5 metric tons (14.9 short tons) , making it one of the largest pliosaurs.”

even the top scientists just get way too hyped for them and carried away.

Dunning-Kruger effect.

[Deleted]

Dec 29, 2022 18:25:34 GMT Hardcastle said:

It seems either unlikely it got that big regardless of what some overzealous scientists say, OR, if it did, it must have sucked really bad in some way. Been majorly sluggish like a whale shark perhaps.
You need to remember the animals that coexisted with it could do so while living full successful lives and breeding, with only the duds being picked off- the young, the old, the sick, the injured, etc etc. The prime specimens of it's prey could comfortably evade it somehow and thwart it's predation attempts.

I always cringe a little at depictions of super predators for this reason. Whether megalodon or t-rex or even my beloved pliosaurs, or even tigers, grizzlies or wolves. So often their fans will talk about how "easily" they decimate their prey and that's literally never true in nature. Every predator struggles and spends most of their time failing while their prey mosies off at leisure laughing at them. That's a predator's 9 to 5 occupation- humiliation and failure, scattered with rare triumphs.

Therefore I don't let myself get excited about t-rex or megalodon or etc because their apparent strengths were evidently counterbalanced by weaknesses, and those must be some pretty dramatic weaknesses to nerf such impressive super monsters and make them real animals in harmony with nature.

If I was a meg fan I'd want to believe it is smaller rather than larger, because the bigger it is the slower and more incompetent it must have been to not have cleansed the ocean of all whales.
Whales have one calf and take a loooong time to gestate it and an even longer time to raise it. All through that time and then through that calf's life up to breeding age a good portion of whales had to be fending off megalodon attacks to make their species viable. If meg was ANYTHING like what they say, anthing like this-

How on earth could whales even exist in that universe? It's absurdity and not a realistic animal, not as portrayed. In reality it had to be a much more humble, grounded and flawed predator. Ditto for T-rex.

Megalodon existed with early Great whites and Orcas, while Livyatan had been extinct for ~ 10 million years already.
- not being able to adapt like Megalodon.

Clearly the shark was a successful predator.

[Deleted]

@hammerhead

Thoughts?

[Hardcastle]

Dec 29, 2022 18:39:31 GMT @ling said:

Dec 29, 2022 18:25:34 GMT Hardcastle said:

It seems either unlikely it got that big regardless of what some overzealous scientists say, OR, if it did, it must have sucked really bad in some way. Been majorly sluggish like a whale shark perhaps.
You need to remember the animals that coexisted with it could do so while living full successful lives and breeding, with only the duds being picked off- the young, the old, the sick, the injured, etc etc. The prime specimens of it's prey could comfortably evade it somehow and thwart it's predation attempts.

I always cringe a little at depictions of super predators for this reason. Whether megalodon or t-rex or even my beloved pliosaurs, or even tigers, grizzlies or wolves. So often their fans will talk about how "easily" they decimate their prey and that's literally never true in nature. Every predator struggles and spends most of their time failing while their prey mosies off at leisure laughing at them. That's a predator's 9 to 5 occupation- humiliation and failure, scattered with rare triumphs.

Therefore I don't let myself get excited about t-rex or megalodon or etc because their apparent strengths were evidently counterbalanced by weaknesses, and those must be some pretty dramatic weaknesses to nerf such impressive super monsters and make them real animals in harmony with nature.

If I was a meg fan I'd want to believe it is smaller rather than larger, because the bigger it is the slower and more incompetent it must have been to not have cleansed the ocean of all whales.
Whales have one calf and take a loooong time to gestate it and an even longer time to raise it. All through that time and then through that calf's life up to breeding age a good portion of whales had to be fending off megalodon attacks to make their species viable. If meg was ANYTHING like what they say, anthing like this-

How on earth could whales even exist in that universe? It's absurdity and not a realistic animal, not as portrayed. In reality it had to be a much more humble, grounded and flawed predator. Ditto for T-rex.

Megalodon existed with early Great whites and Orcas, while Livyatan had been extinct for ~ 10 million years already.
- not being able to adapt like Megalodon.

Clearly the shark was a successful predator.

Successful, but not too successful. The depictions are all something that would be too absurdly successful to exist.

[Deleted]

Dec 29, 2022 18:46:50 GMT Hardcastle said:

Dec 29, 2022 18:39:31 GMT @ling said:

Megalodon existed with early Great whites and Orcas, while Livyatan had been extinct for ~ 10 million years already.
- not being able to adapt like Megalodon.

Clearly the shark was a successful predator.

Successful, but not too successful. The depictions are all something that would be too absurdly successful to exist.

So what, do you think the experts working on the study are wrong and its complete bullshit while you're correct.

- Like if the experts wouldn't have noticed the crazy size estimate.