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Paleobiologist Dr. Kenshu Shimada has been fascinated by fossil sharks since childhood, including the giant otodus megalodon – he found his first megalodon tooth at the age of 13. When he saw the blockbuster “The Meg” in 2018, he thought that something was fishing. The film not only showed the boring megalodon, which survives until modern times, but the 75 feet long (23 meter long) Hollywood version of the predator seemed far too big.
Just as big Megalodon was in real life, a long-standing puzzle swour has never been discovered a complete fossil. But now, to Shimada’s own surprise, his recent research indicates that Megalodon could reach a rich length of 80 feet (24 meters).
In addition, he and his co -authors assume that Megalodon was slimmer than previously assumed, closer to a slim lemon shark as a chunky big one knows how the study on Sunday was published in the magazine Palaeontologia Electronica.
“Megalodon is not a simple, gigantic version of Great White Shark. I think we really have to move away from this concept, ”said Shimada, professor of biological and environmental sciences at Depaul University in Chicago, who acted as the main author.
The findings could help how scientists and popular science fiction represent the huge creature -and may have illuminated, which enables some marine swirling to develop extremely enormous proportions according to Shimada.
Megalodone fossil recording: lots of teeth, but not much more
Unlike “The Meg”, the prehistoric megalodon never worked with people, but the APEX predator dominated the ocean around the world 15 million and 3.6 million years ago.
As a shark, Megalodon is part of the cartilage family. “You have a very poorly mineralized skeleton. There are no real bones that make the skeleton difficult, ”said Shimada. “On the other hand, the teeth are very hard, so they are durable.” Megalodon produced new teeth throughout his life and helped make these fossils a rather common find.
Together with the teeth, the existing fossil stock includes parts of huge shark skeletons from the same period, including a 36 -foot section of a fossil spine from Belgium, according to a press release. The vertebrae of this shark have a diameter of up to 6 inches (15 centimeters); Another fossil shark copy from Denmark has vertebrae that has 9 inches (23 centimeters). For the context, adults have human vertebrae in diameter of about 2.5 centimeters.
With the massive, megalodon -connected massive, jagged teeth, no shark -backbone copies were found, but scientists believed that they are one of the same way.
Megalodon’s teeth are similar to those of a modern large white shark, so some scientists came to the conclusion that the two sharks had a similar body shape. Shimada followed this hypothesis when he published a paper in September 2019, in which he argued that the maximum size for megalodone was “only 15.3 meters) long.
The paleobiologist and senior study author Dr. Kenshu Shimada has a megalodone tooth. He has been interested in the extinct shark since the age of 13. – Jeff Carrion/Depaul University
A few years ago, however, Shimada and some of his colleagues began the underlying assumption that megalodone looked like a great large white shark. When checking a paper in August 2022, in which scientists built a digital 3D model from Megalodon, Shimada found some of the mathematics behind the proportions of the shark.
“We somehow recognized – click – that (the) big white shark is not a good model,” said Shimada. So after a better match with megalodon’s modern analogue.
Megalodon may have had a long, slim body
Shimada and his team compared 145 types of living sharks and 20 species from extinct sharks and built a database about the shares of their heads, body and cocks. The researchers then compared these proportions with the parts of Megalodon’s body found.
“We have a well -known spine, and if we assume that this is the full regular length, why can’t we appreciate the head length and a tail length based on this day?” Said Shimada.
The researchers calculated that the most likely body plan for megalodone did not have been of a strong, tank -like large white, but rather streamlined fish like a lemon shark. In this discovery, said Shimada, his team also met with a larger pattern in marine biology.
Scientists have long thought that the megalodon of a supersize version of the modern large white shark resembled. – Reinhard Dirscherl/Ullstein Bild/Getty Images
However, Otodus Megalodon probably had slimmer proportions, rather in harmony with those of a lemon shark, said new research. – Rolf von Riedmatten/Imagebroker/Shutterstock
“Unsumed, we discovered the secret of why some vertebrates can grow up, but some cannot,” said Shimada. Large white sharks with their thick bodies, which grow up to 6 meters (6 meters), seem to be roughly as large as a stocky animal can be efficient through the water and still moves. In the meantime, slimmer animals such as blue whales, which can grow up to 30 meters long, can reach enormous lengths while they still swim well.
“If you stay in a thinner body, there is a better chance of getting bigger,” said Shimada. This principle applies to Megalodon, which, according to Shimada’s new study, could have been up to 80 feet long, but could have been thinner than earlier models.
Dr. Stephen Godfrey, the curator of Paleontology in the Calvert Marine Museum in Salomon in Maryland, who was not involved in the study, said that he was surprised by the proposed similarity of Megalodon with a lemon shark and the giant size and his team proposed by Shimada.
“The argument that you make that a long, slim animal of this size is more hydrodynamic than if you are really fat and chunky, as if you scale a lively large white -this argument is good,” he said. “Nevertheless, I don’t say that it is in my crawl, but wow. I mean, that’s twice as big as, ”said Godfrey and referred to the estimated megalodone length, which rose from 50 to 80 feet.
Ultimately, there is only one way to know how long megalodone was and what it looked like. “What we really need is the discovery of the entire skeleton,” said Shimada. “The actual test comes when we really have the complete skeleton, and then it will support or refute whether it was really thin or stem.”
Kate Golembiewski is a freelance science writer in Chicago who finds itself through zoology, thermodynamics and death.
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