🤯 Did You Know (click to read)
The megamouth shark belongs to its own unique family, Megachasmidae, created specifically for this species.
The megamouth shark was only discovered in 1976 when a U.S. Navy vessel near Hawaii accidentally snagged a massive, unfamiliar shark in its sea anchor. Measuring over 4.5 meters long and weighing more than a ton, it represented an entirely new family of shark, something scientists did not expect to find in modern oceans.
💥 Impact (click to read)
Large terrestrial animals are almost impossible to miss, yet a shark longer than a London double-decker bus had lived in Earth’s oceans undetected into the late 20th century. Fewer than 300 individuals have ever been recorded, making it one of the rarest large vertebrates ever identified.
Its discovery shattered assumptions that all major ocean megafauna had already been catalogued. The fact that a multi-ton predator could evade scientific detection until the space age underscores how little of the deep ocean has been explored compared to the surface of Mars.
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