This Extinct Shark Had A Stronger Bite Than The Mighty T. Rex

History is full of terrifying beasts that would make even the most ferocious living predators look like cuddly toys. There's the largest prehistoric arthropod, as well as the the giant eagle that positively dwarfs today's bald eagles and menaced its prey from the skies. These prehistoric creatures were wildly intimidating, especially one absolute beast that would decimate today's ocean ecosystems: the megalodon.

There's really nothing more alarmingly ferocious than prehistoric sea animals, many of which are nothing short of nightmare fuel. But the king of these extinct brutes remains the megalodon. Anyone familiar with the cinematic oeuvre of Mr. Jason Statham will know that the British hard man is the only thing that has ever managed to overcome this prehistoric beast, which otherwise is one of the most formidable monsters in the history of planet Earth.

For one thing, the megalodon feasted on whales. Yes, whales. This ancient monster casually devoured what are, today, the biggest animal in the sea and even found time to snack on sharks. Being eaten by a giant pair of jaws with fins can't have been the most pleasant experience, but it gets even worse when you consider how much force the megalodon could leverage with those jaws. We're talking about a bite that was so forceful that it makes a T. rex bite seem like nothing but a little nip from a riled-up chihuahua.

The megalodon lived during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs and experts believe the creature reached lengths of up to 82 feet. In comparison, the longest ever great white shark was just 21 feet and the biggest extant fish, whale sharks, grow to lengths between 18 and 32.5 feet. With these giant proportions, you can imagine the jaw of the megalodon was basically the biological equivalent of one huge portal to hell. Indeed, the jaw of megalodon is estimated to have measured about 9 × 11 feet, but it's the bite force that's truly impressive (and deeply upsetting).

The ancient oceans were full of creatures with formidable sets of teeth. The prehistoric nightmare fish Dunkleosteus, for instance, was a 30-foot long armored apex predator who, rather than teeth, had two long bone edges that protruded from its mouth and acted like giant razor blades to decimate its prey. But even the Dunkleosteus, which also preyed on sharks, couldn't possibly match the megalodon. For one thing, the former had a bite force of 11,000 pounds while the megalodon is thought to have had a bite force of around 40,000 pounds per square inch — making it the creature with the most powerful bite in history. That's an incredible fact to think about, especially in comparison to other predators such as the Tyrannosaurus rex, which had a bite force of just 12,000 pounds per square inch.

We humans have a measly bite force of just over 160 pounds per square inch. Not that you'd ever think we could rival the mighty megalodon, but it's another way of understanding just how powerful the extinct creature's bite actually was — as is the comparison to T. rex.

Back in 2012, a study published in Biology Letters revealed how researchers had created a digital simulation of an adult T. rex head, which suggested the dino may have been able to exert 12,786 pounds of force with its bite. This was a big discovery, as that amount of force was more than three times greater than previous estimates, and means the T. rex had the hardest bite of any land animal to ever exist. Even with that remarkable discovery, however, the T. rex can't compare to the megalodon, which had more than three times the bite power. That's especially true when you consider the T. rex didn't get its ferocious biting abilities until adulthood. A 2021 study published in the American Association for Anatomy used 3D modeling to determine the bite force of younger Tyrannosaurus Rex, and found that the juvenile dinos could only deliver around 269 pounds of force.

Interestingly enough, Deinosuchus, an ancient crocodilian, also had the T. rex beat with a bite force of around 23,000 pounds. This so-called "king of the crocodilians" was an absolute monster, reaching up to 36 feet in length and had teeth that, though shorter than those of a T. rex, were thicker and exerted a much more powerful bite force. But that merely serves to remind us just how formidable the megalodon's jaws — which could almost double the force of the Deinosuchus bite — really were.