What did megalodon, probably the most huge shark that ever lived, appear to be? Scientists do not know, a brand new examine finds.
Regardless of many depictions of the now-extinct shark, together with the one within the 2018 sci-fi motion film “The Meg,” no one alive immediately has a clue in regards to the proportions of megalodon’s head, fins and physique form.
Based mostly on its jumbo-size enamel, megalodon (Otodus megalodon) doubtless reached lengths of at the least 49 toes (15 meters) and as a lot as 65 toes (20 m), making it a colossal beast in contrast with fashionable nice white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) that attain lengths of 20 toes (6 m). “So, it was positively a giant, huge shark with loads of huge enamel,” however not a lot else is thought past that, examine lead researcher Phillip Sternes, a doctoral candidate within the Division of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology on the College of California, Riverside, instructed Reside Science in an e mail.
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The megatoothed shark lived from about 15 million to three.6 million years in the past in heat waters all around the world. Nonetheless, researchers have solely discovered megalodon enamel and vertebrae. “This occurs with all sharks within the fossil report, as a shark’s skeleton is made from cartilage,” Sternes mentioned. “Cartilage doesn’t protect properly within the fossil report, making it laborious for us to grasp the physique type of extinct sharks.”
Up to now, researchers modeled megalodon after the good white shark. Nonetheless, the present scientific consensus is that megalodon belonged to an extinct household, Otodontidae, in the identical order as the good white, known as Lamniformes.
Within the new examine, the researchers checked out a previous mannequin of the megalodon’s look that was drawn from two-dimensional analyses of 5 species of dwelling Lamniformes, together with nice white sharks and mako sharks. These 5 have been chosen as a result of they’re partly warm-blooded, as some researchers suppose megalodon might have been.
However Sternes and his colleagues’ personal evaluation of two-dimensional area information drawings suggests there is not any apparent cause to incorporate solely these 5 shark species, whereas excluding the opposite 10, as a result of there aren’t any systematic variations in look between chilly and partly heat blooded sharks on this order. And since all 15 species within the order look totally different from one another, you’ll be able to’t say a lot in regards to the megalodon’s look by analyzing simply the warm-blooded ones.
The brand new examine exhibits “that physique kind does not actually correspond to physiology very properly,” mentioned Robert Boessenecker, a marine mammal paleontology skilled and a analysis fellow on the Mace Brown Museum of Pure Historical past on the Faculty of Charleston in South Carolina, who was not concerned within the examine.
Nonetheless, the researchers of the brand new examine “used generalized illustrations slightly than pictures of sharks,” within the evaluation, Boessenecker instructed Reside Science in an e mail. “And although the authors level out that the illustrations are all by the identical artist/scientist, standardized, and supposed to signify a generalized or typical particular person shark for every species — it is nonetheless paintings, and such illustrations should be ground-truthed by evaluation of pictures (which the unique examine used).
In different phrases, it is potential that counting on illustrations affected the outcomes of the examine.
So, will we ever know what megalodon seemed like?
Discovering a preserved megalodon specimen “will likely be very troublesome — we do not have many giant Cenozoic [66 million years ago to present] shark skeletons, and never even a whole articulated dentition of a megatoothed shark,” Boessenecker mentioned. However there are a number of locations on this planet that might conceivably protect “a fossil with a physique define or some preserved cartilaginous parts of one of many megatooth species,” Boessenecker mentioned. These embrace the Pisco Basin of Peru, which dates to the Miocene epoch (23.3 million to five.3 million years in the past), and the Monte Bolca fossil space in Italy, which dates to the Eocene epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years in the past).
“In all honesty, till we have now skeletal stays of megalodon, science doesn’t know what the shark truly seemed like,” Sternes mentioned. That mentioned, “it might very properly have seemed like every of the 15 dwelling lamniform species. I nonetheless say these are an excellent supply for inspiration and potentialities.”
The examine was revealed on-line Monday (Feb. 7) within the journal Historic Biology.
Initially revealed on Reside Science.
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