The Otodus megalodon, the largest shark ever discovered, may have had a sleek, long-bodied appearance. Reconstructing the appearance of ancient, extinct animals is a difficult task, especially when only teeth and fossilized vertebrae are available. The megalodon’s cartilaginous skeleton makes it even more challenging to reconstruct its body shape. Traditionally, modern great white sharks have been used as a model for megalodon’s body shape, as they are the largest predatory sharks alive today and are somewhat closely related to megalodons. A 2022 reconstruction based on the cartilaginous vertebral column of purported megalodon remains revealed a body length of over 11 meters. However, older work from the 1990s had calculated the entire animal’s length as about 9 meters. Shimada and his colleagues argue that the 2022 study still assumed megalodon was more or less great white-shaped.
2024-01-21 19:01:00
Source from www.sciencenews.org
