Well first of all, technically, you ARE a crusher, at least more so than a slicer (but of course as a human your dentition isn't really good for either, because it's on the best way to become a rudimentary organ...), unless you can show me the razor-sharp exanguination-dentition you have instead of primate grinding teeth. Your teeth are not ziphodont. Bone damaging has little to do with overall bite potency.
The freaking point is, you can say just the same you say about
Carcharodon also about
Carcharocles. If you compare a white shark biting off a human leg (or sawing in half a dolphin) to you leaving a mark on a chicken bone, what is so different about C. megalodon leaving scratchmarks on a whale bone? It is not automatically much more potent at that in relative terms because it is bigger and accordingly the damage is huge in absolute terms.
All your example shows is how the capability to damage some bones is everything but unusual, in fact absolutely normal for animals that don't have proper adaptions for bonecrushing (sometimes even ANY predatory) behaviour, like you, or a sabre-toothed cat, or an Allosaur, or a great white shark, or, to some degree, a C. megalodon. This of course doesn't imply any animal could easily crush or cut ANY bone with the same efficiency, otherwise there'd hardly be animals with special adaptions that are very good at it (spotted hyaena, T. rex) or with adaptions in a totally different direction that obviously don't inflict more than relatively superficial damage on a large bone (komodo dragon, Allosaurus)
Broad dentition is inversely correlated with bite force and crushing but consistent with a "normal" slicing bite among sharks. Tooth thickness is a different thing, but it is likely (at least partly) square-cube-law induced and even if not, if it is really an adaption for slicing every size of bone, it would in turn limit normal exanguination potential in favour of this capability, not make it the ultimate animal jaw. You're having a far too simplistic and at the same time highly speculative look at the actual facts.
Check out the selection of bitten whale bones in Renz, 2002, or the stuff you posted yourself. Few (and mostly or only small pieces like
this one) are sawed through, most are showing superficial scratches to somewhat deep ghashes.
I don't know how from that you can conclude the ability to bite through even the biggest bones, when you yourself at the same time give examples why this is inapropriate.
I fully understand the difference between deep and shallow, it is always relative. What's deep? Is 1cm deep? for a stab from a sword?-no, for a T rex bite?-no, for a komodo dragon bite on bone, yes.
You can characterise both as ghashes or scratchmarks, depending on what you perceive as deep or shallow. I think if
you deny such obvious things you should at least stop accusing other people of living in denial and leave them in peace.
I did not even deny that, you have to look more closely at what I write or don't write.
My point is it wasn't as potent at damaging bones as
Livyatan (or other conical-toothed animals) probably was, and definitely CLOSER to the great white in terms of its biting function, not that it was nothing but a larger great white. And it wasn't just better at everything and overall, like you are all the time trying to suggest.
And most importantly, you have to stop perceiving this as a personal attack on
C. megalodon the like of "megalodon's bite wasn't potent and in general it was just a big great white", when it is just a reasoning using an obvious comparison and functional morphology (like, among others, Wroe et al did, funny enough without any notion of it "sawing through even the biggest bones"). You have to stop just viewing the extremes (an animal can either crush/slice any bone or it has delicate teeth requiring it to totally avoid contact), and start viewing hinted differences to be on a somewhat more moderate level.
If it could slice "any bone", how about this:
Yes, sure, it would totally slice that one in half. You were the one who was using common sense as an argument, so try to apply it to this case.
There is a record of a great white severing a dolphin in half:
www.elasmollet.org/Cc/Cc_list.htmlIt just isn't accurate to assume
C. megalodon routinely sliced bones in a fashion completely alien to extant sharks, and even less that it routinely killed by biting through large bones(and I mean that relative to its own size and that of its prey, not relative to a human or a chicken). We can see a similar
kind of damage to that recorded from megalodon attacks (again, in relative terms) in extant lamnids. period
Given the same evidences, I cannot see C. megalodon slicing "any bone it wanted".
You do not see it, that doesn't mean it couldn't happen, neither that it was in some way related to this. Merely, we have evidence for
Allosaurus leaving large bite marks in very large bones (proportionally larger than bite marks of
C. megalodon that I have seen, and very similar in their characteristics...and associated with nipping off meat!). This alone simply doesn't mean anything.
That you have little interest in the attack style and fossil evidence for predation of allosaurian dinosaurs is clear to me, you took care of that, but you have to at least notice the paralells that exist, and look at the evidence, and their importance and try to regard them objectively, instead of closing your eyes to them.
On the monitor-lizard: square-cube-law!
And 20kg is far oversized, a cetothere is much smaller compared to
C. megalodon and its jaws, so is the majority of bones we find sliced in half.
Search for the word "size" and you'll find it quickly. At least I gave you a source, instead of continously claiming you were not paying attention without even posting what you are supposed to pay attention to...
Ok, lets make a quick comparison. Such a great white would have upper anterior teeth approximately 4-5cm in lenght, right? I know how thick a tibia is approximately, because I have one. It would by no means be smaller than that rib compared to the tooth.
C. megalodon sliced through some bones and was pretty proficient at it, which is not in disagreement with what I'm arguing, but its teeth and capabilities are still comparable to analogies such as the white shark, not something completely different. Its attack style was different and certainly this influences the kind of injuries usually seen on its prey, but there is not just a merely functional reason for that.
And it's not as if Great whites didn't also behave very brutal when attacking their prey, they impact it at high speeds and jump several metres out of the water to then shake it, sawing out big pieces. Unlike you suggest, there are not two classes of animals, one (eg. great white shark, Allosaurs) completely unable to attack bony regions and another (
T. rex,
C. megalodon) able to cut/crush ANY bone.
I did, and saw no "radically different" in there, just a notion of different attack strategy. These two have basically the same tooth shape, one is just more robust than the other, because it had a preference for somewhat larger prey and especially for attacking differently with bigger prey.
It interested you enough to ridicule it, didn't it (but not enough to remember it and what it means to your wrong statements about allosaurian teeth)? What exactly am I ignoring? I do not see anything (perhaps that's because I'm extremely ignorant, like you believe...), I merely see you are taking statements as facts and interpreting them in the way you like (...or perhaps I'm just open-minded and objective and you might be the one misinterpreting this case!), instead of confining yourself to what is actually there.
All the time you are telling me how you hate speculations and they should never be done. Then you cannot differentiate and take tons of speculations as facts on other matters.
Considering that was a programme depicting a 20m long smaller relative of Livyatan, pretty much. You remember what Wedel said about the way he was censored in COTD? How he was turned into suggesting something he was debunking (that sauropods had two brains)?
Funny enough, an axe was also an analogy used for Allosaurus at times, and you called it an "unproven hypothesis".
Anyway, what you write is not fully true. First of all, you never use an axe to cut through thick material nearly as hard as the axehead itself. Secondly, neither crushes, they either splinter or cut. Thirdly, there are obvious differences in the shape and sharpness of axeheads depending on the purpose (broad and blunt for splintering wood along its long axis and narrow and sharp for severing the fibres of a tree from the side). Forthly, ayeheads are made of steel, which is much more resistant to tensional stresses than any tooth, even one of Megalodon.
No, but if it killed this way you would indeed expect at least some (and I mean large bones of big whales, in support of your claims) to be fully sliced through. I have yet to see a really large whale bone (as thick or thicker than the lenght of a megalodon tooth would be a good measure here) that has been sawed through.
And what you call "deeply sliced" mostly appear to be comparatively superficial scrape marks, they don't penetrate deep compared to the thickness of the bones.
No, not while feeding obviously. You have far fewer bite marks here, so a far lower probability to find something. But we know it could bite off a Triceratops' horns, which after all are very thick pieces of bone covered in ceratine.
So, was that so difficult to accept?
Not being a bone crusher doesn't limit your ability to attack something, I am the first to provide you proof of that (and I have done on countless occasions, many of which you did not accept). It is merely impossible to be both a perfect slicer/crusher of big bones and at the same time an effective meat slicer.
Those are exclusive, because they require different tooth shapes. What
C. megalodon was better at in damaging bones, it was worse at cutting soft tissue and vice versa. period.
I've done so more often than I remember you doing it, but that may be because neither of use really did during our debates for some reason (which I find is pretty strange considering you claim of being totally willing to admit being wrong and revise your opinion).
I am overenthusiastic because I think this is 50/50?
The first time I was told that. You were never called overenthusiastic because you favoured
T. rex somewhere I recall...
So, why didn't you post it then? That one expert has one opinion on one animal, and another expert on another animal, doesn't mean they can be directly compared in all cases.
I did not find your points in favour of the Livyatan very good, I think there is little base for anything of that. In fact, they look pretty staged. May be that you just made them to be able to say you also made points in favour of Livyatan. I won't do that, I'm making points why they are evenly matched, give me a strong supporter of Livyatan and those will be in favour of megalodon, and vice versa.
Has it occurred to you I have not made a point really in favour of either creature since this debate began? I have merely been forced into the angle of having to argue against the meg because I argued against overhyping of its killing apparatus...
