In the late Devonian period, when life was just beginning to colonize the land, the first vertebrate superpredator lived 360–415 million years ago. Dunkleosteus telleri, a 10 meter (33 ft) carnivorous armored fish, was the culprit. The size of this fish would have been comparable to a school bus. It weighed around 4 tons and had the strongest bite not only of anything alive at the time, but probably of all time. It bit with 8,000 pounds per square inch of force at the tip of its fangs, according to computer extrapolations of its likely muscles. It was also the first predator to develop bladed jaws with the ability to tear flesh.
Dunkleosteus was a voracious eater who devoured anything that moved. Dunkleosteus includes sharks, fish, invertebrates, and other Dunkleosteus species. Its fossils have been linked to half-digested fish corpse debris. Dunkleosteus probably didn’t know when to stop once it started eating. To keep it prepared for possible dry spells, it was easier to have it evolutionarily programmed to eat as much as it could at all times. Dunkleosteus would have been an apex predator in Devonian aquatic ecosystems, eating almost everything and being preyed upon by nothing.
Dunkleosteus, according to paleontologists who have studied it, would probably win in a fight with a Great White Shark if it had lived until today. This monster could open its massive mouth in a fraction of a second, creating a suction effect that drew small fish into it. It was likely capable of swallowing a human whole. This fish would have been extremely difficult to face head-on due to its heavily armored front. Some of its preferred prey, primitive sharks, hadn’t yet developed bladed jaws, putting it at a severe disadvantage against this superpredator.
Dunkleosteus is unlikely to be the greatest marine predator of all time; plesiosaurs could have easily killed it, and many modern whales are simply too large for anything other than a school of Dunkleosteus to have any effect on them. (There’s also no evidence that Dunkleosteus went to school.) Of course, because these animals never lived at the same time, we can’t determine the winner of a competition like this. It is, however, fascinating to consider.