by Impressive, fearsome and proud of a huge pair of jaws, Hollywood star The Meg left even movie tough guy Jason Statham worried about his size.
Now researchers say the giant prehistoric shark megalodon may have been slimmer than previously thought.
Scientists say that past reconstructions of the extinct beast, also known as the megatooth shark, were flawed because they assumed its body form resembled a larger version of the great white shark. the world’s largest predatory fish.
Instead, the team says a new analysis of measurements from an incomplete set of megalodon fossil vertebrae suggests it looked different, with a longer and slimmer body.
“Our study suggests that the modern great white shark may not necessarily be a good modern analog for assessing at least some aspects of its biology, including its size,” said Professor Kenshu Shimada, a paleontologist at DePaul University in Chicago and the senior author. of the study.
But, he said: “The reality is that we need to find at least one complete megalodon skeleton to be more confident about its true size as well as its body form.”
Writing in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, Shimada and his colleagues report how an earlier study recorded the measured vertebral column of an incomplete megalodon fossil to be 11.1 meters long. However, other work indicated that the length of the same fossil, estimated from the proportions of the great poet, was 9.2 meters.
Among other concerns, the team notes that in some cases a juvenile great white has been used as a model for megalodon, although there are also discrepancies between the ratio of the length of the jaw to the vertebrae for the two species.
Combined with recent research, including estimates of the prehistoric behemoth’s cruising speeds, the team concluded that modeling megalodon’s body form on the proportions of the great white was a mistake and that analysis suggests the beast was more distant prehistoric.
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“However, the slender body would indicate that megalodon may not have been a powerful swimmer either like the modern great white shark,” Shimada said, adding that the observation was consistent with his recent study. suggesting that megalodon may have been a slow cruising shark. with an occasional “swimming burst” to catch prey.
“As one of the largest carnivores of all time, dissecting the biology of the megalodon is essential to understanding the role of large carnivores in the context of the evolution of marine ecosystems and how their extinction affected the development of the oceans today,” he said. said.
Professor John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College, who co-authored some of the research on the new paper reviews, said his team used not only the proportions of the great white to help reconstruct megalodon’s body form but also drew on dimensions the other sharks, although the new study does not prove that such an approach is inappropriate.
“They don’t falsify our hypothesis, they cast doubt on it,” he said.
Hutchinson added that the new study, paradoxically, also draws comparisons with the anatomy of the great white, but does not provide other estimates for megalodon dimensions.
Basically, he said, the work does not change the fact that megalodon was a huge, fearsome shark. “This was one of the largest ocean predators of all time,” he said. “It would be really scary.”
Emerging images
Megalodon is not the only prehistoric beast whose image has evolved over time. Here are some more:
Not so fast: With a huge body, huge teeth and sharp claws, T rex was a fearsome predator. However, it wasn’t as fast as movies like Jurassic Park suggest. Research published in 2021 suggests that they had a walking speed of just under 3mph, while another study from 2011 shows that they reached their top walking speed of around 25mph.
Size courses: In general, while dinosaurs went big, the mammals that lived alongside them went small. But this was not always the case. Velociraptors were about the size of a turkey, and research has shown that some mammals were the size of a badger or a dog.
No pushovers: Some meat-eating dinosaurs were scary, but mammals weren’t necessarily scary. A recently discovered fossil shows a mammal attacking a dinosaur, while another shows the same species of mammal with the bones of a baby dinosaur in its stomach, suggesting it was a meat snack.
ruffled feathers: “In the books I read as a child in the 80s and 90s, dinosaurs were depicted as green, scale-covered brutes, but the discovery of feather-covered dinosaur fossils in China in the mid-1990s showed that many dinosaurs could look much bigger. like birds,” said Professor Steve Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh. “It’s a terrible image change.”
