While cool, the battle between a Megalodon and T-Rex featured in Meg 2: The Trench’s trailer is scientifically impossible. The Meg franchise isn't known for its scientific accuracy: the first installment, the 2018 action-adventure film The Meg, adapted Steve Alten’s book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror but favored thrills over facts. The goofy summer blockbuster saw Jason Statham’s Jonas Taylor team up with a crack team of divers and marine biologists to stop the titular prehistoric shark, which had emerged from the depths of the Mariana Trench. In addition to giant sharks, Meg 2: The Trench promises colossal dinosaurs too.
Unfortunately, a breakdown of Meg 2: The Trench’s trailer makes it clear that a few of the coolest moments aren't believable — or even possible. A character jumping into the ocean out of a moving helicopter and seemingly surviving just scratches the surface. The Megalodon vs. T-Rex showdown that occurs at the beginning of Meg 2: The Trench’s trailer would not necessarily be possible, and not for the reasons viewers might reasonably assume. As surprising as it might seem, a Megalodon would be big enough to floor a T-Rex with one mighty bite — if the two ever actually met.
T-Rex And Megalodon Never Met In Real Life
The very premise of the battle hinges on the assumption that the Megalodon and Tyrannosaurus could have crossed paths. However, the T-Rex went extinct 65 million years ago, while the Megalodon lived between 23 and 3.6 million years ago. Not only did Meg 2: The Trench’s trailer spoil one shocking death, but the promo also misleads viewers when it comes to the timeline of prehistoric life. That said, the Megalodon vs. T-Rex battle isn't a total lie: the family Megalodons belonged to branched off in the early Cretaceous period when dinosaurs were still around.
Using this evolutionary knowledge as a jumping off point, the movie rightly suggests that dinosaurs, more generally, shared Earth with the Megalodon at one point in history. Of course, that's not the only possible excuse for Meg 2: The Trench’s misleading trailer sequence. The scene that features a T-Rex running into a Megalodon also shows a pair of much smaller dinosaurs fighting over food. Later in the trailer, the same dinosaurs can be seen attacking a human, so there's a possibility that Meg 2: The Trench’s T-Rex vs. Megalodon brawl takes place in the movie’s contemporary setting.
Why Meg 2's Science Isn't Totally Wrong
Even if the Megalodon vs. T-Rex battle seen in Meg 2: The Trench’s monster-movie-obsessed trailer does take place in the past, the sequence isn’t completely impossible. It takes some liberties with the periods in which these two creatures were alive, but there is a possibility that an early analog of the Megalodon could have co-existed with the T-Rex. Whether that T-Rex would have been foolhardy enough to effectively run into the open mouth of a Megalodon is another question, but the science and history that served to inspire Meg 2: The Trench might not be as implausible as the plot points found in plenty of other blockbusters.