Something nefarious is underway . At a secret location in a fossiliferous region of a world inheritance site in Western Australia , the tooth of a Megalodon has been hook in what appears to have been a planned operation .
As report byThe Guardian , the tooth was one of several found along the UNESCO - listedNingaloo Coast , turn up in the Second Earl of Guilford - western surgical incision of the United States Department of State of Western Australia . The plan was to wrick this particular tooth – a notably intact fogey liken to its dental compatriot – into an educational exhibit by carefully extracting it and incase it in glass , but sadly this will now not come to pass .
Seeing as the site itself is incredibly distant – tourer are not permit to visit it , and it ’s seldom visit at all – it ’s almost certain that an opportunistic felon did n’t just stumble across it by luck . They would have had to possess prior knowledge of its location , which either evoke some subterfuge is at play here , or someone innocently but mistakenly secernate a mischievous political party about its location .
The whale - exhaust Megalodon shark , whichlivedbetween 16 and 2.6 million years ago , was a veritablebeast . One of the largest maritime peak piranha in Earth ’s history , it weighed at least 50 t ( 55 stacks ) and contact minimum duration of 15.2 metre ( 50 feet ) .
The reconstructed jaw of a Megalodon on display at the National Aquarium in Baltimore . Sergey Illaryonov / Wikimedia Commons ; cubic centimetre BY 3.0
Its dentition are certainly telling , reachingdiagonal lengthsof up to 17.8 centimeter ( 7 inches ) – in fact , its gnashers are so idiosyncratic that that ’s what its species name means : “ big tooth ” . Itsbite forceexceeded that of the far more ancientTyrannosaurus male monarch .
Although all fogy offer worthful data point , those belonging to the dominatingCarcharocles megalodonare arguably of special interest to those in the field of operations , and each new discovery is indubitably a treasure treasure trove of selective information waiting to be decoded .
There ’s someevidenceout there that its extinction allowed baleen whales – which it preyed on – to ultimately farm to their now - monolithic sizes , but there are large blank spaces in our knowledge of its paleoecological habits .
It ’s also worth note that it ’s not completely clear what conduct to its demise , although a recentstudysuggested that reject biodiversity levels driven by ball-shaped environmental change in the end kill off the king of the oceans . As this has well-defined implications for today ’s thickly settled oceansbesiegedby the effects of rapid clime change , the megafaunal Megalodon ’s history informs us of Earth ’s time to come .
In sum , Megalodon fossils belong in a museum , or in the work force of researchers , not in the paws of thieves . It ’s a deep ignominy that such a valuable point was hit from the site in this way . As report byBBC News , the economic value of the tooth is n’t likely to even be that high , which makes its theft an empty motion regardless of your linear perspective .
