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Mega Shark

Aside Markozen.com Animals, Monsters

The extinct superpredator megalodon was big enough to eat orcas, scientists say

This illustration depicts a 52-foot Otodus megalodon shark predating on a 26-foot Balaenoptera whale in the Pliocene epoch, between 5.4 to 2.4 million years ago.

This illustration depicts a 52-foot Otodus megalodon shark predating on a 26-foot Balaenoptera whale in the Pliocene epoch, between 5.4 to 2.4 million years ago.

(CNN)Faster than any shark alive today and big enough to eat an orca in just five bites: A new study suggests the extinct shark known as a megalodon was an even more impressive superpredator than scientists realized before.

The Otodus megalodon, the inspiration behind the 2018 film “The Meg,” lived more than 23 million years ago. Fossils of the extinct giant are hard to come by: While there are plenty of fossilized shark teeth, their bodies mainly consist of cartilage rather than bones, and are rarely preserved.

A research team led by Jack Cooper, a paleobiologist at Swansea University, set out to use 3D modeling from a rare and exceptionally well-preserved megalodon spinal column to extrapolate information about the shark’s movement and behavior. Their research was published in Science Advances Wednesday.

“We estimate that an adult O. megalodon could cruise at faster absolute speeds than any shark species today and fully consume prey the size of modern apex predators,” wrote the researchers.

Most of what we know about megalodons come from scientific inferences: Scientists have estimated the extinct sharks could be as long as 65 feet through a comparison with great white sharks, thought of as their “best available ecological analog,” since they both occupy the top rung in the food chain, according to the article.

The researchers used a megalodon vertebral column from Belgium, a tooth from the United States, and the chondrocranium — the cartilaginous equivalent of a skull — from a great white shark to build their 3D skeleton. Then they used a full-body scan of a great white shark to estimate how flesh would sit on the megalodon’s skeleton.

With a complete 3D rendering, they came up with estimates for the volume and body mass of the shark’s whole body. By comparing the figures to the size of modern sharks, they estimated the shark’s swimming speed, stomach value, calorie needs, and prey encounter rates.

The megalodon they modeled would have been almost 16 meters, or 52 feet, long. It weighed around 61,560 kilograms, or 135,717 pounds, according to their estimates.

They estimated the megalodon would have been able to devour prey the size of orca whales — which can be up to 26 feet long and weigh over 8,000 pounds — in just five bites.

Prey the size of a modern humpback whale would have been too big for a megalodon to eat in full, according to the researchers. Eating large prey may have given the megalodon a competitive edge over other predators. Eating large amounts at a time would have also allowed them to travel great distances without eating again, much like modern great white sharks.

An adult megalodon would have needed to eat a whopping 98,175 calories per day, 20 times higher than an adult great white shark. They could have met their energetic needs by eating around 31.9 kilograms of shark muscle, according to the researchers’ estimates.
The megalodon was also faster than any shark alive, with a theoretical average cruising speed of around 3.1 mph. This speed would have allowed it to encounter more prey, helping it meet its massive caloric demands.
Overall, the data extrapolated from the 3D model paints the portrait of a “transoceanic superpredator,” say the researchers.
Luckily, today’s orcas don’t have to worry about running into the massive shark. The megalodon went extinct around 3.6 million years ago, according to the United Kingdom’s Natural History Museum, for reasons scientists are still trying to understand.

“The Meg” 2018 movie.

Gigantic Gorilla

Aside Markozen.com Animals, Archaeology

Gigantopithecus blacki (Greek and Latin for “Black’s giant ape”) is an extinct species of ape.

The only known fossils of G. blacki, or “Giganto,” are a few teeth and mandibles found in cave sites in Southeast Asia. As the name suggests, these are appreciably larger than those of living gorillas, but the exact size and structure of the rest of the body can only be estimated in the absence of additional findings. Recent research using high-precision absolute-dating methods has shown that after existing for about a million years, G. blacki died out as recently as 100,000 years ago. This means that it coexisted with (anatomically) modern humans (Homo sapiens) for a few dozen thousands of years, and with the most immediate ancestors of H. sapiens before that.

Based on the fossil evidence, paleontologists speculate that Gigantopithecus had an adult standing height of over three meters (ten feet) and a weight of 550 kg (1200 lb), and was thus much larger and heavier than current-day gorillas.

The species lived in Asia and probably inhabited bamboo forests, since its fossils are often found alongside those of extinct ancestors of the panda. Most evidence points to Gigantopithecus being a plant-eater. Some believe that being a plant-eating species, G. blacki was placed at the losing end of the evolutionary competition with humans.

The species’ method of locomotion is uncertain, as no pelvic or leg bones have been found. The dominant view is that it walked on all fours like modern gorillas and chimpanzees. However, a minority opinion favors bipedal locomotion, most notably as championed by the late Grover Krantz. It should be noted that this assumption is based only on the very few jawbone remains found, all of which are U-shaped and widen towards the rear. This widening, in Krantz’s view, allowed room for the windpipe to be positioned within the jaw, allowing the skull to sit squarely upon a fully-erect spine like modern humans, rather than roughly behind it, like the great apes.

Krantz’s studies of Bigfoot, which he called “Sasquatch,” (an Anglicization of the Halkomelem word sásq’ets meaning “wild man”)  led him to believe that this was an actual creature. He theorized that sightings were due to small pockets of surviving gigantopithecines, with the progenitor population having migrated across the Bering land bridge, which was later used by humans to enter North America. (Gigantopithecus lived alongside humans but is thought to have gone extinct 300,000 years ago in eastern Asia).

Dr. Grover Krantz was the most vocal supporter of the theory that Gigantopithecus blacki traversed the ice bridge from Asia to North America and exists today as the creature known as bigfoot.

After seeing footage stills of the Patterson-Gimlin film which appeared on the February 1968 cover of Argosy, Krantz was skeptical, believing the film to be an elaborate hoax, saying “it looked to me like someone wearing a gorilla suit”  and “I gave Sasquatch only a 10 percent chance of being real.”  After years of skepticism, Krantz finally became convinced of Bigfoot’s existence after analyzing the “Cripplefoot” plaster casts gathered at  Bossburg, Washington in December 1969. Krantz later studied the Patterson-Gimlin film in full, and after taking notice of the creature’s peculiar gait and purported anatomical features, such as flexing leg muscles, he changed his mind and became an advocate of its authenticity.  While in Bossburg, he also met John Willison Green and the two remained friends until Krantz’s death.

The Cripplefoot tracks, left in snow, purportedly showed microscopic dermal ridges (fingerprints) and injuries tentatively identified as clubfoot by primatologist John Napier.  Krantz asked Dutch professor A.G. de Wilde of the University of Groningen to examine the prints, who concluded that they were “not from some dead object with ridges in it, but come from a living object able to spread its toes.”  Krantz also attempted to have both the FBI and Scotland Yard study the dermal ridge patterns, and was told by renowned fingerprint expert John Berry, an editor of the journal Fingerprint Whorld, that Scotland Yard had concluded the prints were “probably real.” To his disappointment, a subsequent 1983 article in the journal Cryptozoology, titled “Anatomy and Dermatoglyphics of Three Sasquatch Footprints,”  was largely ignored.

Patterson-Gimlin Film

Giant ‘kraken’ carcass with dinner plate-size eyes washes ashore in South Africa

Aside Markozen.com Animals

The massive, sucker-covered carcass of a giant squid washed onto the rocky shore of Scarborough Beach in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday (Aug. 16). The beast, which measured nearly 14 feet (4.3 meters) long, was the second giant squid to crop up on a beach in the region this year, according to the South African news site news24(opens in new tab).

The last known giant squid (Architeuthis dux) to wash ashore near Cape Town showed up about 6 miles (10 kilometers) northwest of Scarborough Beach, on Long Beach in Kommetjie, on April 30, Live Science previously reported. That cephalopod measured roughly 11.5 feet (3.5 m) long. For comparison, the largest giant squid ever seen measured a whopping 43 feet (13 m) long, and some studies suggest that the creatures could potentially reach 66 feet (20 m) long, although no squid of such size has ever been spotted.

The squid that washed onto Scarborough Beach this week seemed to be another A. dux specimen, said Mike Vecchione, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration invertebrate zoologist stationed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. “Although other large squids exist, I am fairly certain this is a true giant squid,” he told Live Science in an email. 

Without an examination of its internal organs, it’s difficult to guess how the Scarborough Beach squid perished, Vecchione said. “Note that most of the skin has abraded and some of the arms are broken off, but this (especially the skin abrasion) can result from washing up on the rocky shore.” The remaining skin on the squid’s mantle — the muscular sheath that houses its organs — gleamed ghostly white in the sun.

It may be that the squid ventured into shallow, near-shore waters to feed and got struck by a ship propeller, “but this is difficult to prove without witnesses,” Dylan Clarke, a marine scientist and curator at Iziko South African Museum, told news24. “The literature … suggests that they come up into shallower waters because they display a behaviour called diel vertical migration. In other words, they venture into shallower waters during the evening to feed and migrate back to deeper waters during the day.”

Giant squid generally live in frigid waters some 1,640 to 3,280 feet (500 to 1,000 m) beneath the ocean surface, and they use their dinner plate-size eyes to peer through the inky darkness, according to the Smithsonian. Based on where the animals have washed ashore, scientists think the squids may inhabitat all the world’s oceans, but they’re most frequently seen on the shores of New Zealand and Pacific islands, on the east and west sides of the North Atlantic, and in the South Atlantic along the African coast.

“Strandings of Architeuthis on South African shores are not unusual at all,” Vecchione told Live Science. “It is one of several places around the world where they show up regularly.”

Officials gathered tissue samples from the squid carcass on Scarborough Beach, and these will soon be examined by researchers at the Iziko South African Museum, Gregg Oelofse, the City of Cape Town coastal manager, told news24. Scientists could use such samples to sequence the animal’s DNA and run chemical analyses to detect pollutants and stable isotopes — nonradioactive chemical elements with varying numbers of neutrons in their nuclei — in its flesh, Vecchione said. The isotope analysis would provide hints about the squid’s feeding history, as would an examination of the animal’s digestive system.

In addition, scientists could determine how old the squid was based on its reproductive organs and statoliths, small mineralized masses that sit inside sensory organs in the squid’s head and accumulate “growth rings” over time, Vecchione said. Past studies of these statoliths suggest that giant squid can live to be about 5 years old, according to the Smithsonian.

“The availability of information on giant squids is relatively poor and is either based on dead or dying animals that have been washed ashore or captured in commercial trawl nets,” Clarke told news24. The newfound Scarborough Beach squid will join a collection of giant squid specimens at the Iziko South African Museum that were largely acquired through such strandings or incidental catches during bottom trawls, he said.

Albino Redwood

Aside Markozen.com Nature

Albinism is rare in humans and animals, and it is rarer still in plants, where it manifests as the complete lack of chlorophyll. Because this green pigment is vital to the manufacture of food and thus the survival of plants, an albino plant typically die as seedlings.

There is an exception, however. Researchers have noticed several albino redwoods in California that have managed to survive till adulthood by latching on to the parent redwood and leaching off nutrients from the host tree.

Albino redwood in Henry Cowell Redwood State Park. Photo: Tom Stapleton.

Albino redwoods do not grow into tall majestic trees. Rather they survive as shrub-like vegetation at the base of the parent redwood tree. The roots of the albino redwood is entangled with those of the healthy plant, which enables them to obtain sugar through the connections between its roots. At some times of the year, albino redwoods have distinct white needles. During the winter, they have a good amount of brown foliage.

“The albino plant behaves a lot like a parasite, because it’s dependent on the parent plant for everything,” explains University of California plant physiology professor Jarmila Pittermann.

However, the relationship is not entirely parasitic.

New research have suggested that the albino redwood also helps the healthy redwood trees to survive by filtering out toxins from the soil. Albinos have defective stomata that causes them to lose more water through transpiration, forcing them to compensate by taking up more water through their roots. As a result they accumulate more metals in their bodies than normal trees do.

The research led by Zane Moore, a doctoral student at the University of California Davis, found high levels of toxic heavy metals, including nickel, copper and cadmium. These heavy metals were at least twice as high in the albino redwoods compared to healthy redwood trees.

“They are basically poisoning themselves,” he said. “They are like a liver or kidney that is filtering toxins.”

Albino redwoods were first documented in 1866, when one was found near San Rafael and taken to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where researchers couldn’t figure out why its waxy leaves were white. Later investigation found that the plants, which grow out of healthy redwoods, are white because of a genetic mutation that leaves them without chlorophyll, the pigment that makes plants green.

It is believed that there are about 400 albino redwoods across California’s wilderness. Their locations are not advertised in order to prevent people from seeking them out and collecting souvenirs that would be harmful for the plant.

An albino redwood in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

‘Floating’ Horses Filmed in Arizona

Aside Markozen.com Offbeat

A family vacationing in Arizona filmed a mesmerizing video in which a pair of horses appear to be floating on a river, however the wondrous sight is merely a fantastic optical illusion. The bewildering sight was reportedly captured by Kelli Rogers as she and her grandchildren were visiting Tonto National Forest last month. While paddle boarding along the park’s Salt River, they spotted a pair of horses nearby and Rogers filmed the breathtaking creatures with her cell phone.

When she later looked at the footage, she was did a proverbial double take as the animals look as if they are floating down the river atop a raft. She was not the only one astounded by the strange sight as her video has amassed a staggering 8 million views since she uploaded it to TikTok. As for why the horses appear to be floating, it is an optical illusion wherein the creatures are actually standing still in the river while Rogers was the one who was moving at the time.