Representative image of prehistoric Megalodon teeth.
credit: iStock
New Delhi: The prehistoric gigantic shark, Megalodon, which lived roughly 15-3.6 million years ago, was a more slender organism than previously thought, according to a study.
The Megalodon, or megatooth shark, is typically portrayed as a super-sized, monstrous shark in novels and sci-fi films, including The Meg, the researchers said.
Previous studies suggest the shark likely reached lengths of at least 15 to 20 meters. However, Otodus megalodon is largely known only from its teeth and vertebrae in the fossil record, they said.
The modern great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) has traditionally been used as a model for the body form of O. megalodon in previous studies.
The latest study, published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, however, suggests that O. megalodon had a body form that was more elongated than the modern great white shark.
"The remarkably simple evidence that O. megalodon had a more slender body than the great white shark was hidden in plain sight,” said study senior author Kenshu Shimada, a professor at DePaul University in the US.
A previously described incomplete set of fossil vertebrae from an O. megalodon individual was reported to be 11.1 m in total combined vertebral length, the researchers said.
However, the exact same fossil individual was estimated to be only 9.2 m in total length, including the head, in yet another study extrapolated from the quantitative relationship between the diameters of the largest vertebrae and body lengths measured from multiple modern great white sharks.
“It was a 'eureka-moment' when our research team realised the discrepancy between the two previously published lengths for the same Megalodon specimen,” Shimada said.
“The new study strongly suggests that the body form of O. megalodon was not merely a larger version of the modern great white shark,” noted co-leader Phillip Sternes, who studied with Shimada and earned his master’s degree from DePaul.
“Even though it remains uncertain exactly how long the body of O. megalodon was elongated relative to the great white shark, this new finding marks a major scientific breakthrough in the quest to decipher what Megalodon looked like,” said Sternes, who is now a PhD candidate at the University of California, Riverside, US.
The research team consists of 26 shark experts including Sternes and Shimada, representing 29 academic institutions around the globe, including the UK, Austria, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, France and Australia, as well as the US.