Even bigger than ‘The Meg’: This is how long the largest shark that ever lived was according to a new study
New research suggests that the prehistoric megalodon, the biggest shark known to have existed, was even larger than we thought.
The megalodon, the largest shark ever known to have existed, may actually have been even bigger than experts previously believed.
That’s the verdict of a new study whose results were published earlier this month in the scientific journal Palaeontologia Electronica.
How long do scientists now think the megalodon was?
Led by Kensu Shimada, a paleobiology professor at Chicago’s DePaul University, an international team of nearly 30 researchers has concluded that the prehistoric shark may have measured as much as 80 feet in length.
The size of the megalodon, whose name means “big tooth”, was previously estimated at no more than around 60 feet, per the U.K.‘s Natural History Museum.
Megalodon not built like the great white, researchers say
An animal that became extinct around three and a half million years ago, the megalodon was memorably depicted as a 75-foot-long giant in the 2018 movie The Meg and the 2023 sequel Meg 2: The Trench.
And, in line with scientists’ traditional understanding of the megalodon, the film franchise’s version is portrayed as a shark reminiscent of the modern great white.
However, Shimada’s team of researchers - which features experts from nine different countries - believes the real-life megalodon was in fact a slimmer, sleeker species of shark, more comparable to the modern lemon shark.
“Our new study has solidified the idea that O. megalodon was not merely a gigantic version of the modern-day great white shark,” said Shimada’s co-researcher, SeaWorld San Diego’s Paul Sternes, in a press release issued by DePaul University.
How did the scientists work out the megalodon’s possible length?
The researchers came to this conclusion by studying a 36-foot fossilized section of a megalodon trunk - no complete skeletons of the shark have ever been found - and estimating the length of the missing body parts.
To arrive at their estimate, the scientists collected data on the proportions of a wide range of living and extinct types of sharks - a departure from past studies, which have focused on the great white as a reference point.
According to DePaul University, the scientists “surveyed the proportions of the head, trunk, and tail relative to the total body length across 145 modern and 20 extinct species of sharks”.
“What sets our study apart from all previous papers on body size and shape estimates of O. megalodon,” says co-author Jake Wood, of the Florida Atlantic University, “is the use of a completely new approach that does not rely solely on the modern great white shark.”
“Large stocky bodies are hydrodynamically inefficient”
The scientists say the study’s extensive comparisons with other species of sharks indicate that the megalodon would have been hampered by “hydrodynamic constraints” if it had been stocky in build like the great white shark.
“Living gigantic sharks, such as the whale shark and basking shark, as well as many other gigantic aquatic vertebrates like whales, have slender bodies because large stocky bodies are hydrodynamically inefficient for swimming,” Shimada told an interview with Ars Technica.
“We […] demonstrated that the modern great white shark with a stocky body hypothetically blown up to the size of megalodon would not allow it to be an efficient swimmer due to the hydrodynamic constraints.”
“The real test”
However, Shimada also concedes that the study’s findings can only be confirmed once and for all if a complete megalodon skeleton is finally discovered.
That would be “the real test”, he said to CNN, concluding: ”Then it will support or refute whether it was really skinny or stocky.”
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