Why Would Orcas Survive 500 Million Years of Sea Monsters? | Unexplained Discoveries

They have drowned the biggest animal that ever lived. They have sunk sailboats off the coast of Spain. Nothing in today's ocean hunts a killer whale… but today's ocean is only one of eleven. So we sent ten pods of modern orcas — the mammal-hunting kind, called Bigg's orcas — back through 500 million years of prehistoric oceans, from the Cambrian to the last Ice Age. After every round they land on one of three shelves: WIPED OUT, SURVIVE, or DOMINATE. Would orcas dominate every prehistoric ocean? Not even close, and the reason is not what most people expect. Some prehistoric oceans had nothing big enough to eat. Some got too hot for a warm-blooded animal to survive. And a few were ruled by giants too big to hunt: a pliosaur twice the weight of a bull orca, Mosasaurus with a five-foot skull, Livyatan with the largest biting teeth of any animal that has ever lived, and Megalodon. Along the way: why orcas eat only the liver of a great white, how a pod drowns a blue whale, the valley in Egypt where a Basilosaurus was found with young whales in its stomach region, and the strange fact that the ancestors of orcas swam next to Megalodon for millions of years. Across all eleven prehistoric oceans, the two most dangerous things for a killer whale have no teeth. Which round would you score differently? Tell us in the comments. ========================= 00:00 unexplained discoveries 01:25 Cambrian Period 04:06 Devonian Period 07:15 Permian Extinction 10:58 Pliosaurus Funkei 16:24 Megalodon Shark ========================= #unexplaineddiscoveries #orcas #prehistoricoceans