Adrift in the open sea with no land in sight, it's a common fear.

But if you were stranded in the ocean 10 million years ago, you'd really have something to be scared about.

Unfortunately, that's exactly where you are. And as a huge wave sweeps you upward, you're faced with an enormous set of razor-sharp teeth, each the size of a dinner plate. There's no mistaking

it. It's the mouth of a megaladon. But before you're gobbled up by it, let's learn a thing or two

about the biggest shark that ever existed.

You're listening. You're listening. You're amazed to be amazed.

10 million years ago in the Miocene epoch, there were some nasty aquatic creatures around, so being stranded in the sea would be far from ideal.

You can give up on any hope of the local people forming a search and rescue,

as our early ape-like ancestors didn't

appear for another 4 million years.

Your only company is colossal aquatic killing machines, namely the Megalodon.

But what made this oceanic menace so deadly?

To put it simply, it was enormous.

But not as large as some pictures online would have you believe. Since shark cartilage only fossilizes on extremely rare occasions, most of what we know

about the megalodon comes from little more than its teeth.

By reconstructing the shark's jaws, as well as finding its teeth embedded in huge fossilized whale bones from the time, we've been able to calculate its size.

Most great white sharks

today weigh around a ton and grow to around 15 feet in length. The megalodon, by

comparison, grew as long as 70 feet and weighed over 60 tons. That's seven times the weight

of a T-Rex, and in modern terms, it's almost double the length of a telephone pole and ten times the weight of an African bush elephant.

Female megalodons were the larger sex, often as much as double the size of males.

Like some modern species, female megs gave birth the live young, but made no mistake, these were not cute little shark pups.

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