New research suggests that a giant shark that roamed the oceans millions of years ago could devour a creature the size of a killer whale in just five bites.
This illustration provided by J. J. Giraldo depicts a 16-meter Otodus megalodon shark predating on an 8-meter Balaenoptera whale in the Pliocene epoch, between 5.4 to 2.4 million years ago. At background right, a 4-meter Carcharodon shark seizes a 2.5-meter juvenile of the whale pod. The giant megalodon shark that roamed the oceans millions of years ago could have devoured a creature the size of a killer whale in just five bites, according to a study published Wednesday, Aug.
At around 50 feet from nose to tail, the megalodon was bigger than a school bus, according to the study in the journal Science Advances. That's about two to three times the size of today's great white shark. The megalodon’s gaping jaw allowed it to feed on other big creatures. Once it filled its massive stomach, it could roam the oceans for months at a time, the researchers suggest.
“It would be a superpredator just dominating its ecosystem,” said co-author John Hutchinson, who studies the evolution of animal movement at England’s Royal Veterinary College. “There is nothing really matching it.” The skeleton is made of soft cartilage that doesn’t fossilize well, Pimiento said. So the scientists used what few fossils are available, including a rare collection of vertebrae that's been at a Belgium museum since the 1860s.
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