Reconstruction of a 16m megalodon.
Illustration by Oliver Demuth/Jack Cooper
Over the years,severalresearchpapers have estimated megs size.
Its teeth are shaped like large, flat triangles with serrated edges much like the teeth of livingwhite sharks.
White sharks, along withmako sharksand theporbeagle sharkall belong in the family Lamnidae and are referred to as lamnids.
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These models, while both outstanding, dont depict entirely the same shark.
So how was each one made?
And what scientific approaches were used?
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The other, at the Museum Boola Bardip, is a beautifully crafted model of megs head.
The greater this color contrast, the easier it becomes for underwater predators to go unnoticed by prey.
The megheads jaw size was based on multiple teeth from a single ancient shark.
The rest of the meghead was then 3D modeled to fit the jaws.
The end result was a head that corresponded to a creature roughly 14m in length.
This would be the largest meg shark ever found in Western Australia, but not the largest overall.
This was then finessed by University of Maryland shark fossil expert Bretton Kent.
The 15m-long megalodon model on display at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.
Once we did this, the size estimate we reached was between 1920m.
And this is much larger than most other recent estimates.
A newly discovered megalodon tooth from near Exmouth, Western Australia.
The serrated edge shown here is 145mm long.
This is why megalodon, belonging to this lineage, is now officially classified asOtodus megalodon.
So how could they have evolved to become the colossus that is meg?
This wouldnt have helped megs survival when global temperatures cooled down about three million years ago.
The cold spell would have killed off much of megs food sources, eventually triggering its extinction.
In recent years, coastal limestone outcrops in Western Australia have yielded several new exciting megalodon teeth.
