Scientists Still Don’t Know What The Megalodon Really Looked Like

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While a second “Meg” movie starring Jason Statham would possibly maybe maybe additionally occupy just not too prolonged ago begun manufacturing, staunch scientists composed don’t know what these huge, prehistoric sharks the truth is regarded like.

A original scientific peer reveals that every body beforehand proposed body forms of the mammoth Megalodon, or megatooth shark, which lived nearly worldwide thousands and thousands of years ago, remain in the realm of speculations.

Kenshu Shimada, a paleobiology professor at DePaul University and a coauthor of the peer, talked about:

“The peer would possibly maybe maybe additionally seem like a step backward in science, nonetheless the persisted thriller makes paleontology, the peer of prehistoric lifestyles, an animated and thrilling scientific field.”

Otodus megalodon is in total portrayed as a dapper-sized, gruesome shark in novels and flicks similar to the 2018 sci-fi movie “The Meg.” Old reviews imply that the shark possible reached lengths of at the least 50 feet (15 meters) and presumably as worthy as 65 feet (20 meters).

Per lead author Phillip Sternes, who graduated from DePaul in 2019 and is in the intervening time a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Riverside:

“This original peer reveals that there are in the intervening time no scientific methodology to toughen or refute the accuracy of any of the beforehand printed body forms of O. megalodon.”

In consequence, Sternes added:

“All beforehand proposed body forms of Otodus megalodon must be belief of as speculations from the scientific standpoint.”

diver encounters a megalodon - Illustration (Adobe Stock)
Diver encounters a megalodon – Illustration (Adobe Inventory)

And based mostly completely on Shimada’s present graduate pupil, Jake Wood, the third coauthor of the peer:

“Any meaningful discussion in regards to the body invent of O. megalodon would require the discovery of at the least one total, or nearly total, skeleton of the species in the fossil document.”

Shimada concurred:

“The truth that we composed don’t know precisely how O. megalodon regarded keeps our imagination going. Right here’s precisely why the science of paleontology continues to be an exhilarating tutorial field. We’ll continue procuring for additional clues in the fossil document.”

You would possibly maybe read the elephantine peer here.