Megalodons – giant, prehistoric sharks – reached 50 feet in length, the size of a car.
Predators are super-sized compared to both live and extinct sharks. But how Megalodo got that size is a mystery.
A new study suggests that the size of sharks can be explained by the fact that they ate each other in the womb.
Scientists are not sure how megalodons prey, but a decrease in prey and an increase in competitors could lead to their extinction.
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Megalodon alone had the size of a car in his head.
The prehistoric monster was the largest carnivorous shark to roam the oceans: it reached a length of 50 feet, with the dorsal fins rising 5 feet out of the water.
Ancient Hunter has been thrown into the cultural and scientific spotlight after nearly a dozen new studies over the past few years and a revival of interest in “Mag” by the 2018 Hollywood blockbuster.
Researching the animal is difficult, as the “mag” we left behind is its 6-inch long, toothed teeth. This makes it challenging for scientists to find out how big these animals really were and why they were able to reach such a large size.
But new studies that examine the descendants of Mags help to understand the size of prehistoric sharks in a new way.
An analysis published on Monday suggests that baby megalodons can set themselves up to be super-sized before they are born.
Mag eggs scratch inside the womb, where they always grew bigger and hungrier before their mother gave birth alive. But not all fetuses survive the pregnancy process: some eat through their fetal-mating.
Kenshu Shimda, a lead author of the study and a professor of palebiology at Depul University, told Business Insider that “early-bouncing” embryos will start eating the scrambled eggs around them. “The result is that only a few cubs survive and develop, but each of them can grow significantly larger in body size at birth.”
Elective fossil evidence makes the size of the mag ‘difficult to pin down’
Palebiologist Kenshu Shimda has the teeth of an extinct shark Autodus megalodon or so-called “mag”.
Courtesy Kenshu Shimda / DePaul University / Jeff Carian
Shimda’s group, first of all, wanted to break down how big Megald could not get.
So the researchers looked at how Mag’s modern relatives, called Lamniformes, live today. These sharks – which include great whites, mucous and sandy hair – have a mag-like diet and body type. Shimda therefore measured the size between the shark’s teeth and the body size, then applied it to the fossilized megalodon teeth.
He revealed that the maximum length Mag could get was about 50 feet (15 meters) – twice the length of a great white, the largest carnivorous shark of today.
“This does not mean that megalodon individuals larger than 15 meters did not exist, but their existence has not been determined on the basis of scientific specimens in the museum collection,” Shimada said.
Indeed, the U.K. A group of researchers compared tooth-body comparisons in a September study, and found that megalodons can be up to 6 feet long. That research also showed that the 52-foot (16-meter) megalodon had a head and tail 13 feet (4 m) long, and a dorsal fins equal to the average female height.
Comparison of the reconstruction of an adult Megalodon’s dorsal fin with a tall diver.
Oliver Oliver e. Demuth
“It’s hard to control these parameters because we only have teeth,” Catalina Pimianto, author of that September study, told Business Insider.
Scattered vertebrae exist, but the soft, cartilaginous skeleton of a shark is rarely found in fossils, so scientists have found no other bones.
“It could be that we’ll never get a complete skeleton,” added Mimi Benton, co-author of Pimiento.
Cannibal Megalodons
Given the scarcity of fossils, scientists are forced to use their modern counterparts to make educated inferences about how megalodons affect life and diet.
In theory, sharks can find two ways enough to become as large as a mag: either they become filter-feeders and do not munch on plankton as abundant as whale sharks, or they gain the ability to control their own body temperature. Is, which improves their hunting skills.
A January 2019 study by Pimianto’s group suggested that Megalodon follows a later path: they were mesothermic, meaning they could control the temperature of their organs. This allowed the sharks to stay in the cold water and swim faster – and therefore catch more prey.
Mesoderm was “a key driver in its large-scale evolution,” Pimiento said.
What led this shark to become mesothermic? Shimada thinks the key to the answer to the question lies with the way lumniforms give birth.
The jaws of Carcharoclis megalodon, an extinct species of shark, lived about 23 to 3.6 million years ago.
Photo by Christine Grace Florida Museum
The eggs of the female laminiforms come inside her body, after which the chicks develop in her womb before she is born. Babies who grow up early benefit from eating their unruly brothers and sisters – a process called “intrauterine cannibalism”.
Sometimes, like the Sandiger shark, hatch puppies also eat their litter mates, after their birth.
Given that lumniforms are related to megalodons, Shimda said similar rules probably apply to prehistoric predators.
In a new study, their group suggested that such cannibalism could kickstart Megalodons Mesordami: with the blood of a number of their siblings being well fed – Mag Moms in their womb may be asked to eat more. And to eat more, they either had to turn to a plankton diet, or crank their internal temperature to better hunt.
‘His hunting style was probably a solo strike’
The teeth of prehistoric sharks can tell us more about how mags like to hunt.
A research in March 2019 suggested that sharks like to bite hard and then go back. Adult megalodons carry a sting force of 11 tons.
Flesh marine mammals such as Megalodon’s Blade-Ike, serrated tooth whales and dolphins were ideal for animal gifts.
Photo by Christine Grace Florida Museum
“Megalodon’s teeth suggest that his hunting style was probably a strike tactic designed to stabilize his prey and allow it to bleed,” Victor Perez, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. He added: “A shark does not want to catch a whale, as it can injure and possibly injure a shark in the process.”
Researchers have found traces of megalodon bites on the bones of marine mammals, but whether those comments represent predatory attacks or evacuation activities is still unknown, according to Shimda.
Declining prey and competition with other sharks can cause the mag to become extinct
However, the large-sized megalodon mystery has little to do with its size. Paleobiologists like Shimda and Pimiento are not yet sure how the shark became extinct.
Megalodons dominated the oceans for 20 million years before disappearing from fossil records from 6 million to 6.6 million years ago. Theories about their sudden extinction run the gamut.
A 2018 paper posted that the supernova was the result of dog megalodons in a deadly radiation 150 light-years away. Another study suggested that newly developed great white sharks compete with them.
A great white shark on the island of Guadalupe, Mexico.
Gerald Shambles / Unsplash
Pimiento said the extinction of megalodons was indeed similar to the appearance of great white and orca whales, but at the same time, marine mammals declined – their prey prey – as global sea levels fell.
As Meg jokes with more rivals for less prey in a shrinking sea habitat, her fate was sealed.
Some believe the mag is still floating in the oceans, but scientists disagree.
In the 2018 film “The Mag”, Jason Statham fights Magellan, who, according to the story, swims from the depths of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean to modern times. The film is based on the 1997 book “Mag: A Novel’s Deep Terror”.
Benten said that although the idea that mags may suddenly appear in the oceans these days is not credible, the dimensions of on-screen sharks match the findings of his recent study.
“I think the book and the movie got the size about right, and most of the behavior was based on the modern Great White Shark,” he said.
Megalodon’s shot in the 2018 film “The Mag”.
Warner Bros.
Steve Alten, author of “Mag,” told Business Insider that his fans constantly ask him if he believes the creatures are still alive.
“My answer is always the same,” he said. “Because so much of the oceans remain unpredictable, the likelihood remains that they may be there in cold water.”
Benton agreed that it was “absolutely reasonable” for people to ask questions.
“Oceanographers pull all sorts of amazing things out of the deep oceans. Think of the long-extinct Koelkanth, but first found alive in 1938.”
But he and Pimiento both said that if Megalodon were still out there, researchers might have found it already.
“Most sharks live in shallow, coastal waters – not in cold seas like koelkanth,” Benten said. “He was a big animal, so I’d be amazed if we missed him.”
