How Weird Is Winter?  The Science of Cold and Ice 
By Heath Shive 

As House Stark would say: Winter is coming.  Or, depending on where you live, winter is already there.  So it might help to “know thine enemy.”

The Weird Stuff About Winter

1. Ice and snow are technically minerals, just like rubies or emeralds.  They fit the official geological definition.  And just like other minerals…
2. Ice and snow come in a variety of colors!  The color depends on the impurities.  Volcanic particulates of the Tambora Eruption of 1815 produced blue, brown and red snows in Maryland; and red and yellow snow in Taranto, Italy.  In 2010, the Stavropol region of southern Russia experienced a light purple snow, attributed to Saharan dust.  There has even been…
3. Pink snow!  Pink snow is regularly found in the Sierra Nevada and is called “Watermelon Snow” due to its pink color.  It even smells like watermelon - though you shouldn’t eat it!  The color is the result of Chlamydomonas nivalis, a species of cold-loving green algae that has a secondary red carotenoid pigment (astaxanthin).  But the true color of pure ice and snow is…
4. Blue!  Pure ice is blue, for the same reason the sky and oceans are blue.  Water absorbs more light from the red spectrum and reflects more blue.  However, snow looks white because trapped air reflect back all light.  If an ice cube doesn’t look blue, it’s because large quantities are required to make the effect obvious…and beautiful.  But you don’t want too much ice or otherwise we could have another…
5. Ice Age! Starting about 2.5 million years ago (the Pleistocene Epoch) glaciers grew rapidly and spread across the world.  At their peak, glaciers covered as much as 30% of Earth’s current land area.  Summer temperatures were 10ºC (18ºF) colder than present.  Sea levels dropped by more than 90 meters (250 feet), resulting in an extra eighteen percent increase in dry land, in turn creating land bridges across the Bering Strait, the English Channel, and Indonesia.  The last Ice Age ended 15 thousand years ago, and the Pleistocene ended almost 12 thousand years ago.  But to this day, no one is really sure…
6. Why the Ice Age began in the first place!  Theories abound.  The foremost theory involves the Milankovitch cycles, a term for how the Earth’s “wobble” (precession), axial tilt (obliquity), and planetary orbit (eccentricity) all vary with a regular cycle of every 20 thousand, 40 thousand and 100 thousand years respectively.  Those variations affect how the Earth is exposed to the Sun’s heat.  Milankovitch cycles have operated since the Earth was turning, but the Ice Age was a geologically recent event, only in the last couple million years.  For the majority of Earth’s history, the planet has been considerably warmer. 
7. So, what else could have cooled the planet?  Did the erosion of the newborn Himalayas absorb and remove vast quantities of carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas?  Did the connection of the North and South American continents provide the catalyst?  When the two continents joined, the Gulf Stream now carried much warmer and wetter waters farther north.  This would increase precipitation (snow), and so increase glacier growth.  Other scientists say that continental drift plays a factor, as Ice Ages don’t really occur until there were large ice caps on the North and South Poles (which only occur when large landmasses are near the Poles to serve as climatic “anchors”).  No one is certain how the Ice Ages were born, or when they’ll return again.  But what is known for sure is...
8. The coldest spot in the universe is here on planet Earth!  In 2003, MIT scientists led by Wolfgang Ketterle were able to come within 810 trillionths of a degree of absolute zero (-273.15 Celsius).  Absolute zero is the coldest temperature known to science - so cold that even atoms stop moving.  But this super-cold spot was only a thousandth of an inch across.  In 2018, Italian physicists were able to bring an entire cubic meter to a temperature of 6 milliKelvin - or -273.144 degrees Celsius!  This is still colder than anywhere else in the known universe!  ​

Conclusion
​
Winters come and go.  But humans have tackled winters - and worse - and we still survive.  We have fought every crisis that Mother Nature brings to us.  And we have what it takes to overcome…or move to Florida.

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Sources:
"Southern Russia overwhelmed with purple snow 09/03/2010." YouTube. Uploaded by czesio95, 8 Jul. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty8kWGhWyYU. Accessed 22 January 2017

Armstrong, W.P. "Watermelon Snow." Environment Southwest. Number 517, 1987, pp. 20-23.

Officer, Charles & Jake Page. Tales of the Earth: Paroxyms and Pertubations of the Blue Planet. New York City: Oxford University Press, 1993.
​
Fagan, Brian, ed. The Complete Ice Age: How Climate Change Shaped the World. New York City: Thames & Hudson, 2009.

Rafferty, John P, ed. The Cenozoic Era: Age of Mammals. New York City: Britannica Educational Publishing, 2011.

Did Dinosaurs Build Cities? 
By Heath Shive

Back in the 1990s, there was a cartoon called The Terrible Thunderlizards.  The premise?  A team of dinosaur-soldiers is given the mission to kill the first humans in order to protect dino-civilization – and the dinosaurs always fail. 

These cartoon dinosaurs have cities, helicopters, radios, and even missile launchers.

Remember, this is a cartoon. 

It was funny (one of the dinosaurs sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger).

But it made me wonder: Could dinosaurs really have had cities?

You might say: Of course not!

However, what evidence really could survive 65 million years?

And somebody actually wrote a book about this!

Fragile, Disposable Civilization

Alan Weisman wrote a very readable book entitled The World Without Us.  The book is basically a thought experiment. Weisman does not write about dinosaurs – he writes about how easily human civilization (cities, roads, bridges, and everything) would disappear from Earth if humans ever went extinct.

Let’s use New York City as an example.  New York was built on an island that originally had 40 streams.  These streams are paved over now.  The city needs pumping stations to keep subways and foundations dry.  Without humans, the water would seep back into the ground quickly.  In time, the skyscrapers would start toppling over! 

Even the sturdiest bridges would not survive 1,000 years. 

For that matter, the area of New York City has been scraped clean by glaciers 3 times in the last 100,000 years.  And it will be again in the next Ice Age. 

Mount Rushmore (South Dakota, U.S.A.) is carved from solid granite – and it might very well be the last human structure on Earth.  By Weisman’s logic, if granite erodes 1 inch every 10,000 years, then the human faces on Rushmore could last 7 million years!

Even Plastic Must Die

According to government sources, disposable diapers and plastic beverage bottles could take 450 years to break down. Fishing lines need 600 years. 

But a glass bottle could last 1 million years! 

In the end, the last human artifact on Earth might be the first – flint spear heads.  Flint is already a very strong rock and could be kept intact against the mix of geological processes for millions of years. 

Conclusion

The pensive melancholy of Weisman’s book makes one realize the truly fragile nature of our mighty technology and civilization.

If dinosaurs had cities, they would have suffered the same fate that our cities will meet someday.

This is not meant to be a sad article.  The point I want to make is that life on Earth is a wonderful thing.  The possibilities seem endless.  Even gun-toting dinosaurs can have a chance.    

It is humbling to realize the potential of our little planet.

And it can be amazing to fulfill our potentials too. 

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Sources:

Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us.  Thomas Dunne Books, 2007.

Monster Morel Mushrooms Conquered the World!
By Heath Shive

It’s morel mushroom season! 

But the morels these days are wimps. 

There were once mushrooms that were big as palm trees! 

These super-mushrooms dominated the surface of the Earth!

I’m talking about Prototaxites, a super-fungus which was once the largest land creature on the planet. 

Even the Mario Bros. couldn’t handle these toadstools!

Don’t believe me?

To the science!

Prototaxites, the Super Mushroom

During what geologists called the late Silurian Period (i.e., 420 to 370 million years ago) – millions of years before the first dinosaur roared – the world was a different place.  The ocean had a lot of life.  But life on dry land was fairly barren.  Plants were small – the tallest trees in the world would come up to your shoulder.    

But Prototaxites could be a 3 feet (1 meter) thick and almost 26 feet (8 meters) high! 

The Prototaxites were discovered in Canada by W.E. Logan in 1843. But John William Dawson thought the tree was a kind of ancient pine tree eaten by fungus – so he named the fossil Prototaxite,”first yew tree.” 

But 150 years later, plant scientist Francis Hueber classified Prototaxites – the whole thing – as one big fungus, due to its structure and morphology. 

A few years later, a research team (including Hueber) concluded that Prototaxites was indeed a fungus, due to its variety of carbon isotopes. In plants, like today's trees, two particular carbon isotopes should be in balance because they get their food by photosynthesis. In plants and animals that eat other life-forms, the isotope ratio should vary widely. The Prototaxites’ combination of isotopes indicated that it fed on decaying organic matter, just what you would expect from a fungus. 

Of course, Prototaxites was a super-fungus, so it would need a large food supply.  But if the plant world was new and small, where would the food come from? Scientists Erik Hobbie and C. Kevin Boyce suggested that Prototaxites could have fed on “algal-derived organic matter.”  Even without true plants, there still would have been a huge compost derived from millions of years of algal mats. 
 
The Non-Fungus Theory

However, another group of researchers asserted that Prototaxites was more like a kind of liverwort, curling up with other liverworts and plants and ascending into the air. They thought that the fungus-like structure was just an associative growth with fungi and cyanobacteria, just like in some modern liverworts.

But the “monster mushroom” theory is currently in vogue.    

The Mushroom Vogue
 
Did Jules Verne know about Prototaxites?  In chapter 30 of Jules Verne’s classic Journey to the Center of the Earth, the heroes find themselves in “a forest of mushrooms” that had been “constructed on a gigantic scale.” 
 
Simon and Schuster’s 2008 edition of the classic has a drawing of the mushroom forest on its cover. If you eliminated the mushroom caps, you’d get a pretty good visual of Prototaxites. 

My cousin told me he was a “mushroom hunter.” I told him that you can’t call it “hunting” when it lacks teeth and legs.  But who could hunt Prototaxites?  Not even Mario and Luigi.

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“Fire Ice”: The World’s Largest Fuel Source - and China Got There First

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Scientifically speaking, ice is a rock.  When you lock methane in this rock it’s called methane hydrate...and it’s the largest fuel-source on the planet.

And China got there first!

The Science

According to the USGS Woods Hole Science Center, methane hydrates are created when ice forms a cage-lattice around a low molecular weight gas (principally methane).  The ice is like a net that captures whatever gas which will fit inside.  There’s still a lot of mystery regarding methane hydrate formation. 

Methane hydrate formation requires large pressures and low temperatures.  So it’s no surprise to learn that methane hydrates form underground in cold environments, principally in the ocean’s continental shelves, but also in the Arctic permafrost.  Methane hydrates can even form in modern gas lines and plug the line!  The fix is to raise temperatures or lower pressures.

The methane is usually biological in origin - the result of microbes that are eating decaying carbon matter.  However, there are some methane hydrates that get their methane from the deep-processes of the Earth itself (thermogenic methane).

Methane hydrate can form in veins and even in large masses.  However, methane hydrate forms primarily in the tiny pores of marine sediments, which makes it even harder to mine as a fuel source. 

The Fuel

The U.S. Energy Information Administration states that estimated gas hydrate reserves stand at anywhere from 10,000 trillion cubic feet (TCF) to 100,000 TCF.  For comparison, the U.S. EIA stated that as of 1 January 2016 there were 6,879 TCF of conventional natural gas in the world.  Methane hydrate could potentially be a larger potential fuel source than all other carbon-based fuels like oil, gas, and coal combined!

China’s Success

Even though methane hydrate deposits are generally only a few hundred meters below the continental shelves (as opposed to oil reserves miles below ground), there have been a multitude of problems harvesting the hydrates.

But on May 18 of this year, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported that China had finally succeeded in extracting methane from the hydrates.  According to the report, China is extracting about 16,000 cubic meters of gas daily.  The drilling area is in the South China Sea, and they are pulling the gas from a depth of 1,266 meters. 

The United States has been in collaboration with the governments of Japan and India with methane hydrate recovery projects.  These projects have not yet yielded China’s claimed results. 

Conclusion

There have been worries that methane hydrates are contributing to global warming.  Since methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, one might argue that using methane hydrates for fuel might be a safer way of disposing of the climate threat than letting the hydrates release methane directly into the atmosphere. 

However, the USGS has concluded after a decade of research that methane hydrates are not contributing to Earth’s warmth at all.  Should we let sleeping dogs lie?  Can the world afford to let such an energy resource go untapped?

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Despite increased global consumption, global reserves are not shrinking – they are getting bigger!
 
In 1980, Isaac Asimov wrote How Did We Find Out About Oil?, a children’s science book.  He ended the book with a somber prediction.  In 1980, world oil reserves stood at roughly 648 billion barrels.  Since the world was consuming 23 billion barrels a year, the world would run out of oil in about 30 years. 
 
Thirty years later, we didn’t run out of oil.  There must not be too much oil left, right?  Well – that’s the crazy thing.  In 2010, world oil reserves stood at more than 1.3 trillion barrels!  Not only hade we used up all of Asimov’s doomed 648 billion barrels of oil, but now we have over twice as much oil as what we had in 1980!
 
The World Oil Supply
 
Global proven oil reserves stood at 640 billion barrels in 1980.  By 1990 they were at 1 trillion barrels.  By 2010, global proven oil reserves stood at 1.35 trillion barrels.  By 2013, that number had increased to 1.64 trillion barrels.  That’s an increase of about 300 billion barrels – almost half of the world’s supply in 1980 – in just three years!
 
In 1980, Iran’s oil reserves were estimated to be 58 billion barrels, but today they stand at 158 billion barrels.  In thirty years, Iran’s reserves have almost tripled!  In 1980, Iraq’s oil reserves stood at 30 billion barrels.  And today?  Iraq’s reserves contain 140 billion barrels!  Kuwait’s oil reserves have almost doubled in the last 30 years.  Don't get me started about Canada!
 
Global supply increases despite increased oil consumption.  In 1980, the world consumed 23 billion barrels annually.  Today the world gobbles oil at a rate of 32 billion barrels a year.
 
Yet the world oil supply doesn’t get any smaller – it keeps getting bigger!
 
The Mystery of Oil 
 
How does that work?  We’ve been told all our lives that oil is a finite resource doomed to run dry.  The clock is ticking.  The end is near!  But instead of oil supplies diminishing, oil supplies just keep getting bigger.  The giant oil fields of legend are all declining, true.  But for every giant on the way out, there are numerous new fields being discovered and tapped.
 
The truth is that no one is sure just how much oil the Earth has. 

The most famous modern example is the oil-rich Bakken Formation, centered in North Dakota (USA).  In 1995, Bakken’s oil potential was assessed at about 151 million barrels of recoverable oil. 
 
But in 2013, the U.S. Geological Survey issued a press release.  The Bakken Formation now had potential for 3.65 billion barrels of recoverable oil!  You read the word billion, all right.  That’s one enormous jump!  It’s not like someone just forgot to “carry the one” when they did the math.  But with more thorough explorations, greater data, and newer drilling technologies, new oil is being found all the time.
 
Conclusion
 
In short, the more we look for oil, the more oil we find.  This does not mean that oil is an infinite resource.  Nothing is infinite on Earth.  Nor are increasing oil supplies an excuse for wasteful consumption.  Waste costs money; efficiency makes money.  But the cries of a doomed oil future are far from the real picture.  We’ve given pessimism enough airtime.  Do we dare to be optimistic?  Realistically, we have every reason to be! 
 
Sources:
Asimov, Isaac.  How Did We Find Out About Oil?  New York: Walker, 1980.  Print
 
International Energy Outlook 2016. U.S. Energy Information Administration.  May 2016.  Web.  Accessed 12 August 2017.  <https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/0484(2016).pdf>
 
International Energy Statistics. U.S. Energy Information Administration.  Web.  Accessed 12 August 2017.
 
USGS Releases New Oil and Gas Assessment for Bakken and Three Forks Formations. U.S. Dept. of the Interior. 30 April 2013.  Web.  Accessed 17 Nov. 2014
<http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/usgs-releases-new-oil-and-gas-assessment-for-bakken-and-three-forks-formations.cfm>  
 
Technology-Based Oil and Natural Gas Plays:  Shale Shock! Could There Be Billions in the Bakken?  U.S. Energy Information Administration.  November 2006. Originally published on EIA site, now stored as pdf in the link below.  Accessed 12 August 2017.
<http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Bakken.pdf>
 
 
 
 

Did you know that the world was running out of helium?

Back in 2012, an article in Popular Mechanics magazine prophesied a coming global helium shortage.  Many other sources agreed.  But things have taken an optimistic tone of late. 

Is Helium Rare?

Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe!  But on Earth, helium is relatively rare.  Helium makes up 5 parts per million of our atmosphere.  Pretty low, right?  In the earth’s crust, helium is only 8 parts per billion!

Helium is made by the breakdown of radioactive material – mostly uranium – in the earth’s crust.  The breakdown is composed of alpha particles – which are basically helium nuclei (2 protons, 2 neutrons).  Eventually, helium makes its way to groundwater and natural gas. 

Natural gas deposits are the world’s source of helium.  America’s natural gas deposits are especially helium-rich.  The United States produces over half of the world’s helium, according to the USGS. 

The Helium Shortage?

The U.S. National Helium Reserve at one time had over a billion cubic meters of helium, about half of the world’s reserves.  The Reserve was founded in the 1920s, to be used in the nation’s (largely imaginary) fleet of airships.  The Reserve was later used in the Cold War for rocket-fuel for nuclear missiles and spacecraft.  The Reserve was comprised of five production plants and over 400 miles of pipes. 

But that’s a lot of equipment to maintain.  After the Cold War, the Reserve became too expensive and racked up over a $1 billion in debt.  So in 1996, Congress decided to sell off the helium.  Everything must go!  The price of helium plummeted.  Uses increased as prices decreased. It was so cheap, no one bothered with recycling. 

Later, fear began to settle in the hearts of the scientific world.  Helium is used in many scientific applications – like MRIs, industrial welding, fiber optic production, rocket fuel, etc.  It is not what you would call a renewable resource.  It escapes into outer space and is lost forever. 

Helium Sales Today

So Congress changed its mind.  In 2013, Congress passed the Helium Stewardship Act.  In a nutshell, there are auction sales now – with a lot of legal hoopla – that now establish a better market price for helium, and in the process, spur private industry to start to pick up the slack.  This will help pay off the Reserve’s debt faster.  But there won’t be much of the Reserve left afterwards. 

The Reserve’s size has diminished from over a billion cubic feet to less than 250 million cubic feet, according to the Bureau of Land Management’s last estimates.  According to an article in the New York Times, the Reserve most likely won’t survive another 5 or 6 years.   

So Now What

All is not lost, however.  The shortage has inspired a lot of “helium prospecting.” According to a Newsweek article, a “world-class” natural gas field in Tanzania has an estimated recovery of over 54 billion cubic feet of helium.  According to a press release by the European Association of Geochemistry, researchers in the western U.S. and Canada believe that the helium potential in wells has been greatly underestimated. For that matter, helium recycling is beginning to be a scientific norm.  And the rising price of helium (doubling in the last 15 years) will create its own momentum for conservation.

Conclusion

The National Helium Reserve was fixture in the scientific community for almost a century.  Its depletion created a huge, unnatural drop in helium prices.  The new price shock – and ideas of shortage – are a natural result of the new market equilibrium.  On the positive side, this could inspire not only new conservation and appreciation of this remarkable resource, but could also be the beginning of a new age of earth exploration…and a greater understanding of our natural world.        
 
 

 


In northern Chile, there is a place called the Salar de Atacama.  During the last Ice Age, it was a large lake, but now it's one of the driest spots on Earth.  All that remains now is a salar, or salt flat. 

The brine found beneath the surface is processed through a series of evaporative pools, which concentrate certain elements.  At the end of this series, the brine takes on a sickly yellow-green color.  Why?  Because of the lithium concentration.

Without lithium, the Wireless Revolution grinds to a halt!

The "Saudi Arabia of Lithium"

Cell phones, smart phones, laptops, tablets, and even electric cars all run on the magic of lithium batteries.  Lithium batteries have become crucial to modern living.  The Salar de Atacama, called the “Saudi Arabia of Lithium”, provides the world with 30 percent of its lithium needs.

The lithium-rich salt comes from the unusual chemistry of the surrounding mountains.  The Pacific ocean floor (Nazca Plate) burrows beneath South America - and has been for millions of years - creating the Andes Mountains and many volcanoes.  Some lavas, especially rhyolites, are very lithium-rich.  Rain leached lithium away into valleys and formed ancient lakes.  Today the lakes are gone.  But below the surface, the brine remains and can be processed for its precious lithium. 

The Modern Super-Battery

What’s so special about lithium batteries? 

Batteries create a stream of electrons.  In your car’s lead-acid battery, electrons are pulled off of lead atoms.  Lead is a very heavy, with an atomic weight of 207.  But, lithium is the third-lightest element in the universe!  Lithium is the lightest of all metals, with an atomic weight of about 7 (thirty times less than lead). 

Therefore, lithium can provide the same electrons without the weight.  Lithium batteries are very small and very powerful, but they’re also volatile with a high heat output.  In the mid-2000s, Sony had to recall many of its batteries because some laptops were catching on fire!

Seth Fletcher’s highly readable book "Bottled Lightning" describes the evolution of the lithium battery in copious detail, from its conception in the 1970s, its evolution in the 1980s, and to its implementation in the 1990s.  Portable phones started out so heavy that they were only portable in vehicles (the “car phones”).  Smaller lithium batteries transformed bulky cell phones into smaller devices that could fit in your pocket.

Increased power.  Increased portability.  Voilá!  The wireless revolution was born!

Are We Running Low on Lithium?

The greater the demand for cell phones (and smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc.), the greater the demand for lithium.  If the electric car were to become mainstream, the world lithium demand would explode exponentially.  William Tahil once predicted a kind of future "Lithium Crisis," similar to the predicted Oil Crisis.  Geologist R. Keith Evans countered that world lithium reserves were sufficient for generations to come.

The problem with such predictions is that global lithium reserve estimates change every year, as do global rates of consumption.   For that matter, lithium – unlike oil – is recyclable.

Conclusion

Our geology underfoot is a treasure.  The earth’s tin and copper ores supplied our Bronze Age.  Iron ores forged our Iron Age.  Coal and oil fueled the Industrial Age.  But the blood of the Modern Age is lithium!  The geology within our earth keeps mixing with the imagination in the human mind.  We can only guess at what Age comes next.    
 
Sources:

Fletcher, Seth.  Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy.  New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.
 
Koerner, Brendan I.  “The Saudi Arabia of Lithium.”  Forbes 2008. 
 
“The Trouble with Lithium: Implications of PHEV Production for Lithium Demand.” Tahil, William.  December, 2006.  Accessed on 24 November, 2013. http://www.evworld.com/library/lithium_shortage.pdf
 
“An Abundance of Lithium.”  Evans, R. Keith.  March, 2008.  Accessed on 24 November, 2013.   http://lithiumabundance.blogspot.com
 
U.S. Geological Survey.  2013.  Mineral Commodity Survey 2013: Lithium.  Reston, VA, USA: U.S. Geological Survey http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/mcs-2013-lithi.pdf  Accessed on 24 November 2013. 
 
 
 
 
 
           

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...”  But oceans have never been safe.  Even millions of years ago, the oceans had the Megalodon shark - a super-shark similar to a great white shark.  Its bite radius could eat a whole cow in one gulp.
 
Now what if I told you that there was whale – a super-whale – that used to eat Megalodon sharks for dinner?

Allow me to introduce Livyatan melvillei - a raptorial whale, as big as Megalodon, but with bigger teeth!  L. melvillei lived in the same ancient oceans as Megalodon.  The two super-predators must have clashed eventually.  But who would win?

The Megaolodon and the Miocene Whales

C. megalodon was one of the largest predators of all time.  Megalodon was an apex predator that ruled the oceans from 26-2 million years ago (Mya).  Megalodon had a probable maximum length of 18 m (59 ft) – making it as large as a house with a length 3 times greater than the largest great white sharks alive today! 

A predator of that magnitude would need large prey, so it’s no surprise that Megalodon ate baleen whales. 

And there were plenty of baleen whales back then!  During the Miocene epoch (23-5 Mya), whales achieved their greatest biological diversity with about 20 different genera (compared to only 6 genera today).  During the Miocene, the planet was warmer, and the oceans were larger.    

But during the Pliocene, the world became colder.  North and South America combined, redirecting the ocean currents.  Ice ages and glacial expansion lowered sea levels.  Some whale species adapted to the colder waters.  Other whale species died.  Eventually, Megalodon died with them.    

The Pliocene wasn’t easy for the super-shark.  It wasn’t just losing its hunting ground and food supply. In fact, the Megalodon itself may have been food…for Livyatan melvillei. 

The Livyatan melvillei

In November 2008, paleontologists discovered the first fossil remains of Livyatan melvillei in the Peruvian desert.  The fossils consisted primarily of the head and jaws.  The skull was about 3 meters (10 feet) long.  The teeth were 36 cm (14 in) long!  The fossils have been dated from 9.9 – 8.9 Mya.  The whale was classified into the Physeter family of whales, which includes the modern sperm whale.  In fact, the research indicated that Livyatan was just as big as a sperm whale – reaching lengths of 13.5 to 17.5 m (44 to 57 ft) long.  In other words, as big as the Megalodon!      

They called their new fossil Leviathan (later changed to Livyatan), after the legendary biblical creature.  The second part of the name is in honor of Herman Melville, the author of the epic “Moby Dick.”

Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) have narrow jaws with teeth only on the bottom, made for sucking up squids.  But, L. melvillei had functional teeth in both of its jaws.  Livyatan’s jaws were robust, and its temporal fossa – where the jaw muscles anchor on the side of the head - were considerably larger than in a sperm whale.  In fact, Livyatan’s skull looks more like an orca’s skull than a sperm whale’s skull.   

L. melvillei is one of the largest predators yet known, with whale experts using the phrase "the biggest tetrapod bite ever found" to explain their find. 

In 2016, fossil enthusiast Murray Orr found a tooth over 30 cm (12 in) long in Beaumaris Bay, Australia!  The tooth dates to around 5-6 Mya.  The tooth looks remarkably like that of L. melvillei, maybe from another Livyatan species.  That means Livyatan was around for millions of years and all around the world.  Poor Megalodon couldn’t catch a break!

Livyatan vs Megalodon

Who would win in a fight?  Both Livyatan and Megalodon had about the same peak size.  The Megalodon would have had twice as many teeth, but the Livyatan’s teeth would be twice as big!

The Livyatan would have certain advantages.  If it was like a great white shark, Megalodon would have been solitary.  If it was like a sperm whale, then the Livyatan cows and calves traveled in pods, and the bulls – though usually solitary – could have traveled in groups too.  If Livyatan whales were like the modern raptorial orcas, then Livyatan could have hunted Megalodon as a pack.  Even today, killer whales hunt great white sharks, primarily for their oil-rich livers.    

Of course, this is all moot.  Neither Megalodon nor Livyatan survived the Pliocene.  For which, I am thankful.  It’s bad enough the modern oceans have billions of tons of plastic trash.  We don’t need anything scarier in the water too.   

Sources: 
Lambert, Olivier; Bianucci, Giovanni; Post, Klaas; de Muizon, Christian; Salas-Gismondi, Rodolfo; Urbina, Mario; Reumer, Jelle (1 July 2010). "The giant bite of a new raptorial sperm whale from the Miocene epoch of Peru". Nature. 466 (7302): 105–108.

Smith, Bridie (21 April 2016). "Move Over Moby Dick: Meet Melbourne's Own Mega Whale."  The Sydney Morning Herald. 
  

 
“April showers bring May flowers.”  So April’s been getting the credit all these years.  Or maybe, just maybe, it was the dinosaurs!

The Dinosaur Herbivores
 
There are basically two kinds of plants, gymnosperms and angiosperms.  All flowers – including May flowers - are angiosperms, and so are grains, grasses, cereals, sedges, fruits, vegetables, palms, oaks, hickories, almost every berry, etc.  Today angiosperms dominate the planet.  However, once upon a time, gymnosperms - like conifers and ferns - were king.
 
Then 140 million years ago, everything started to change.  During the Jurassic, all the major herbivores were long-necked, tree-browsing dinosaurs (Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, etc.).  By the Cretaceous, almost all of those tree-browsers were extinct.  In the Cretaceous, the major herbivores were low-browsing ground-feeders. 

The Dino-Flower Theory
 
Robert T. Bakker in his famous book The Dinosaur Heresies postulated that this new dominant ground-browsing herbivore created an flower-favorable environment.  A gymnosperm-dominated woodland would provide few available niches for early flowering plants to occupy.  But if a herd of hungry Triceratops mowed down the ground cover, the net effect would reset all the ground cover back to square one.  Ground cover would have to grow from scratch, similar to after a forest fire.  Angiosperms with their faster growth and maturity rates would recover first and dominate the newly available niches.  Flowering plants flourished.  May flowers rule!

The Critics
 
But Bakker has his critics too.  For example, angiosperms first flourished close to the equator.  Dinosaurs only sparsely populated this region, which would seem to diminish the effect of their appetites.  Furthermore, angiosperms didn’t dominate the plant world until the Late Cretaceous, when dinosaur numbers already were starting to dwindle.  Others believe that environmental factors may have aided angiosperms more than dinosaur herbivores.  The Mid-Cretaceous was a period of increased volcanism and ocean floor production.  Did increased temperature, CO2, and sea levels favor angiosperms over gymnosperms?  Or did the rise of the pollinator insects (wasps, bees, and moths) during the Mid-Cretaceous give angiosperms their decisive advantage?

In any case, the world the dinosaurs left behind was angiosperm-supreme.  The graves of dinosaurs were festooned with flowers. 
 
Sources:

Bakker, Robert T.  The Dinosaur Heresies:  New Theories Unlocking the Mystery of the Dinosaurs and their Extinction.  New York: William Morrow, 1986.
 
Barrett, P.M. and Willis, K.J. Did dinosaurs invent flowers?  Dinosaur-angiosperm coevolution revisited.  Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 76 (2001), 411-447.
 
Willis, K.J. and McElwain, J.C. The Evolution of Plants.  New York: Oxford UP, 2002