Some Megalodons Reached 80 Feet—But They Weren’t Built Like Great Whites, Research Suggests

15 million years before movies like Jaws and Open Water gave swimmers the heebie-jeebies, a prehistoric shark species called Otodus megalodon reached gargantuan sizes. Researchers have reassessed just how large the now-extinct beast would have been—and the results are fin-tastic. To refine its own estimates of megalodon’s size, an international team of biologists, paleontologists, and anatomists analyzed partial megalodon fossils alongside the morphology of both existing and extinct shark species. From this data they extrapolated that the prehistoric shark, sometimes called a megatooth shark, could have grown to a maximum size of 80 feet (24 meters) in length. Their study, published today in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, also provides potential insight into why certain shark species were able to achieve gigantism, while others remained baby sharks by comparison (doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo). Based on a partial 36-foot (11-meter) fossilized megalodon vertebral column (spine ... Read full article.