What did the megalodon do?

Answer 1

What was Megalodon?

Carcharocles megalodon (abbreviated to C.megalodon) was a huge prehistoric shark that lived between 25 and 1.5 million years ago (the Miocene and Pliocene epochs). It is now extinct but no one is sure when C.megalodon died out.

Judging by its fossilized teeth we think that C.megalodon may have looked like a great white shark. However C.megalodon's teeth were much bigger than a great White's - samples up to 15cm long have been found - so we know that the shark itself must have been huge as well. Teeth have been found in Europe, Africa, Australia, North America, southern Asia, South America, Indonesia and New Zealand.

By the way, you pronounce it Car-karrow-klees mega-low-don.

How big is the tooth?

Our tooth is 17cm from the top right corner to the tip, 3.5cm at its thickest point and weighs 655g. It is a shiny grey colour. Preserved shark teeth can be almost any colour, depending on the chemistry of the sediment in which they lay. This tooth was found near Tampa, Florida, USA.

Modern sharks have a few rows of teeth with the front row doing most of the tearing work. The teeth constantly fall out and are replaced by new teeth. C.megalodon was probably the same.

How big was C.megalodon?

It is difficult to say how big C.megalodon was. Many people think it was about 17 metres (55feet) long. That's more than twice the length of a Great White Shark - a mere 7 metres (22 feet) long.

We are not sure how big C.megalodon was because, like all sharks, its skeleton was made from cartilage. Cartilage doesn't last like bone so we have no C.megalodon skeletons to study. However C.megalodon teeth do preserve so we can guess how big C.megalodon was from its teeth.

C.megalodon's nearest living relative is probably the Great White Shark. There is a link between Great White tooth size and body size, which may also apply to C.megalodon. However, we are not sure which C.megalodon teeth we have found - are they the smaller ones at the back or the larger ones at the front? Because of this confusion people think that C.megalodon could have been anything from 12-100 metres long (39-260 feet).

What did C.megalodon eat?

Scientists think that C.megalodon ate the large whales that were alive at the same time. Fossilised whale vertebrae and flipper bones have been found with huge bite marks made by teeth that look like C.megalodon's.

Could C.megalodon still be alive?

Some people claim to have seen huge shark fins, and whales with enormous bites taken out of them, however the answer is still 'probably not'.