The Discovery Channel has been in deep chum all week over opening their annual Shark Week with a special called Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives. Those looking to tune in to see an exploration of the life of the presumed-extinct legendary shark were treated to something very different indeed.
Megalodon, in case you don't have SyFy, was a massive, great white relation that prowled the oceans as recently as 1.5 million years ago according to the fossil record. Because a shark's skeleton is made of cartilage (Which does not fossilize), the only evidence we have to go on are the teeth the megalodon left behind. What teeth they are, though! Recovered megalodon teeth measure over seven inches in length. Comparing them to the teeth of the great white, that puts the length of the megalodon somewhere between 50 and 80 feet long. Monster doesn't do it justice.
Many cryptozoologists think that it may be possible that the megalodon still exists in the world. A tooth analyzed by Dr. W. Tschernezky in 1959 was judged to possibly be less than 15,000 years old, though that claim has been disputed by suggesting the teeth analyzed were from earlier ocean deposits that had been churned up and re-deposited with newer sediments.
Flashback Reality Bites: "Shark Week"
Regardless, any cryptolozoologist can point to the coelacanth as iron-clad proof that just because an animal disappears from the fossil record it doesn't automatically rule out the possibility of survival.
None of these topics was the focus of the opening of Shark Week, though. The Discovery Channel didn't show off the latest theories on the life cycle of the giant shark, nor did thet necessarily explore modern possible sightings of the shark. Or well, they did, but only as a background for their faux-cumentary (Can be pronounced "fuck you-mentary" if you like) implying that a fishing boat off the coast of South African had been attacked by a megalodon on April 5 of this year.
Combining popular shark cryptid staples like Submarine and The Lord of the Deep that are said to inhabit the Indian Ocean, the two-hour special with production values just slightly better than a SyFy film, minus the tornado, tried to continuously convince us that 1. People were dead by the mouth of megalodon, and 2. The film crew was in constant danger of this predator stalking them like the Jaws: The Revenge rip-off it was.
There's been considerable backlash from fans and, well, everyone over the production. There's nothing wrong with a horror film that takes a documentary approach if that's what you like. What is pissing everyone off is the fact that we tuned into see a documentary and didn't get it.
The Discovery Channel seems hellbent of destroying the last bit of credibility is has. Remember a time when it's programming was boring specifically so that stupid people would flee it screaming and leave the smart people learning about the world around us?
