According to an analysis, the giant ancient shark Megalodon was significantly slimmer and possibly longer than previously thought. In the past, the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) was often used as a model for the megalodon’s appearance, explains a research team with participation from Austria in the specialist journal “Palaeontologia Electronica”. However, new analyzes showed that the ancient shark was probably not as plump and stocky as its modern relative.
“Our team reexamined the documented fossil record and found that Megalodon was slimmer and possibly even longer than we thought. Therefore, a better model may be the modern mako shark,” said lead author Phillip Sternes of the University of California, Riverside. “It would still be a formidable predator at the top of the previous food chain, but it would have behaved differently because of this new understanding of its body.”
Megalodon became known, among other things, through the science fiction films “Meg” and “Meg 2: The Deep”, in which the basking sharks swim out of the depths of the oceans. The real megalodon (Otodus megalodon), which, according to the University of California, died out 3.6 million years ago, has so far mainly had huge teeth – which were also found in large numbers in the Vienna area and can be seen in the Natural History Museum (NHM) Vienna have been discovered – as well as some vertebrae. According to the study authors, who also include Patrick Jambura, Julia Türtscher and Jürgen Kriwet from the Institute of Paleontology at the University of Vienna and Iris Feichtinger from the NHM, not even a complete vertebral column of a megalodon is known.
Information from “an incomplete spine without other skeletal elements such as the skull” and a “comparison with a CT scan of a young great white shark” to infer Megalodon’s body shape are “very prone to errors,” Kriwet said. So far it has been estimated to be a maximum of 15 to 20 meters long, reports Sternes’ team. However, its length is probably underestimated – although the researchers do not provide any specific new information.
Rather slow-swimming hunter
According to Sternes, the new 2D and 3D reconstructions suggest “that Megalodon was not simply a larger version of the modern great white shark.” “Combined, the picture emerges of a comparatively slim and long, regionally warm-blooded, rather slow-swimming top predator,” says Jambura. This would have occupied a similar or perhaps even higher position in the food chain than today’s great white shark.
A slimmer and more elongated body could therefore indicate that megalodon also had a longer digestive canal. In this case, food utilization was better and the shark had to eat less. “This means less hunting pressure on other marine creatures,” said Sternes.
The work of Sterne’s team uncovers several weaknesses in previous analyses, said Timo Moritz of the German Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund, who was not involved in the study. The biggest weak point in a study that was particularly criticized by Sterne’s team was the classic circular argument: “If you assume from the outset that Megalodon looked like a great white shark, you will of course find out in the end that it looked like a great white shark and lived like that has.” The conclusion of the new study that Megalodon was probably slimmer is understandable.
John Hutchinson, a lead author of the 2022 megalodon study that was particularly criticized by Sterne’s team, sees the situation differently: “We estimated that the megalodon individual we modeled was about 15.9 meters long. The new study criticizes this, but delivers “There is no alternative hypothesis and is therefore not meaningful,” said Hutchinson, who works at the Royal Veterinary College in London. “Importantly, the new study argues that without a complete skeleton, any reconstructions are too speculative, but researchers continue to make their own crude speculations,” he criticized. Aside from the various speculations about shape and size, “understanding the success, but also the extinction, of such predatory fish is of great importance, as it allows conclusions to be drawn about the future of today’s top predators, which are indispensable for the ecological balance of the oceans,” he said NHM paleontologist Iris Feichtinger, who was involved in the new study.