Youre going to need a bigger boat a much bigger boat

BRISTOL, England Paleontologists with the University of Bristol, England, have unveiled the true size of the prehistoric mega-shark megalodon.

Today, the most fearsome living shark is the Great White. Adults can exceed 20 feet in length and bite with a force of two tons.

The University of Bristol in a press release Sept. 3 announced new research estimating the Great Whites fossil relative was more than twice that long and could bite with a force of 10 tons.

The massive predator and star of a share of B movies lived from 23 million to around three million years ago. The fossils of megalodon are mostly huge triangular cutting teeth bigger than a human hand.

Jack Cooper, who completed his masters courses in palaeobiology at the University of Bristols School of Earth Sciences, and colleagues made close comparisons to a diversity of living relatives with ecological and physiological similarities to megalodon, according to the press release, and used a number of mathematical methods to pin down the size and proportions of this monster.

Shark expert Dr. Catalina Pimiento from Swansea University and professor Mike Benton, a palaeontologist at Bristol, supervised the project. Professor Humberto Ferrn of Bristol also collaborated.

The journal Scientific Reports published the research.

I have always been mad about sharks, Cooper said in the press release. As an undergraduate, I have worked and dived with Great whites in South Africa protected by a steel cage of course. Its that sense of danger, but also that sharks are such beautiful and well-adapted animals, that makes them so attractive to study.

Megalodon, he continued, was actually the very animal that inspired me to pursue paleontology in the first place at just 6 years old.

Previously the fossil shark, known formally as Otodus megalodon, was compared with the Great White.

Cooper and his colleagues, for the first time, expanded this analysis to include five modern sharks. Pimiento said in the press release that megalodon is not a direct ancestor of the Great White but is equally related to makos, the salmon shark and porbeagle shark.

We pooled detailed measurements of all five to make predictions about megalodon, he said.

Benton explained the team first had to test whether these five modern sharks changed proportions as they grew to adulthood.

If, for example, they had been like humans, where babies have big heads and short legs, he said according to the press release, we would have had some difficulties in projecting the adult proportions for such a huge extinct shark.

He said they were surprised and relieved to discover the babies of all these modern predatory sharks start out as little adults and dont change in proportion as they get larger.

Cooper added this meant they could take the growth curves of the five modern forms and project the overall shape as they get larger and larger.

Right up to a body more than 52 feet long.

The results suggest at that size, Otodus megalodon likely had a head about 15 feet long, a dorsal fin approximately 5.3 feet tall and a tail almost 13 feet tall.

The reconstruction of the size of megalodon body parts represents a fundamental step towards a better understanding of the physiology of this giant, according to the press release, and the intrinsic factors that may have made it prone to extinction.

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