Ancient shark had colossal bite

[UM-Bot]

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: The great white shark may have awesome jaws but they are nothing compared with those of megalodon, its gigantic, whale-eating ancestor.

A new study of the extinct creature's skull shows it had an almighty bite, making the prehistoric fish one of the most fearsome predators of all time.

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News

[:PsYKoTiC:BeHAvIoR:]

Having a jaw made of cartilage probably helped the Megalodon to shred its prey without any jaw movement. With the prey struggling in its mouth, this would have made the flexible jaw move, ripping the prey into pieces.

[MasterPo]

It grew up to 16m (52ft) in length and weighed in at 100 tonnes

That doesn't seem right.

1 standard ton is 2,000 pounds. A metric ton is about 2205 pounds. So 100 tons means 200,000 to 220,500 pounds (depending if they mean standard or metric, probably the latter).

I've spent a lot of time on boats 50 feet long. Even they weren't 100 tons.

Seems to me for an animal to be 50 or so feet long and weigh that much it would either have to have tremendous girth and/or be made of extremely dense tissues.

Put it another way: Depending on the source, it is said the largest Great White shark ever caught is from 21 to 25 feet long and weighing 7,000 to 9,000 pounds.

So if you double the length for the Meg the weight factor is more than 20 times! That doesn't make sense.

I'm not questioning the existance of the Meg or that it's much larger than a Great White. I'm questioning the "facts" in this article.

[Myles]

That doesn't seem right.

1 standard ton is 2,000 pounds. A metric ton is about 2205 pounds. So 100 tons means 200,000 to 220,500 pounds (depending if they mean standard or metric, probably the latter).

I've spent a lot of time on boats 50 feet long. Even they weren't 100 tons.

Seems to me for an animal to be 50 or so feet long and weigh that much it would either have to have tremendous girth and/or be made of extremely dense tissues.

Put it another way: Depending on the source, it is said the largest Great White shark ever caught is from 21 to 25 feet long and weighing 7,000 to 9,000 pounds.

So if you double the length for the Meg the weight factor is more than 20 times! That doesn't make sense.

I'm not questioning the existance of the Meg or that it's much larger than a Great White. I'm questioning the "facts" in this article.

Great catch.

[sumthingnice60]

I think the mass is closer to 45 tons.

[SteveMartin]

I think the mass is closer to 45 tons.

Agreed,it seems to me that a lot of scientist's seem to hover around the 40-60 ton mark for a meg.Also the build of the Meg was a lot different to the modern day Great White so this would i guess explain the greater weight ratio.

[DONTEATUS]

maybe the numbers got flipped? 100 feet long and 52 tons? just an guess?

[Set the Fallen]

Really, really cool.

The sharks golden age to say it that way.

[BaneSilvermoon]

Well in their defense, in living creatures weight does skyrocket at a rather unexpected ratio as you move to larger specimens. I would guess its because a slight increase in length/height adds an enormous total increase in girth to stay in proportion. But I do agree 100 tonnes seems like it may be a somewhat high estimate. Personally I'd say somewhere between 50-80. (and now this whole thing has gotten me thinking about the size of prehistoric whales)

I've actually seen a formula for this somewhere before that was supposedly fairly accurate. Maybe someone around here cares to bring it up?

::Edit::

Oh and Ironically I looked back over the original article I read on this on Live Science before I ran across it here. That article said

The giant shark Megalodon, which means "Big Tooth" in Greek, may have grown to more than 50 feet long and weighed up to 110 tons (100 metric tons), at least 30 times as heavy as the largest of its living relatives, the great white shark.

:::double edit:::

Surprises me that this didn't come to mind as soon as I read the article, but there's another issue in there. Somewhat recent studies have suggested that Great Whites are NOT descendants of Carcharadon Megalodon but rather come from the Mako family. Tooth shape, root structure, serration density and growth trajectory (in all four stages of the tooths life) match nearly identically between Mako ancestors and the Great White. Where as not a single one of those qualities match between the Great White and Megalodon. In addition to that, fossils where found a few years back that were thought to be a possible intermediary species between the Mako and Great White. There's a fair amount of evidence for this idea, which often pushes the possibility that the Megalodon was the end of its bloodline.

But in the end, we really have no idea what a Megalodon even looked like in the first place. All we have are a bunch of teeth (and a couple vertabrae bones) to judge an entire animal by. So we're basically just taking the common ratio of todays sharks, something like 9-10 feet for every inch of tooth, and applying it to a prehistoric shark tooth. The only reason we view the Megalodon as an enormous Great White is simply because when scientist discovered the huge tooth they just took the biggest shark we knew of and projected it out to a larger size. They may have been very different physically.

Edited August 7, 2008 by BaneSilvermoon

[thefinalfrontier]

WEATHER THEY ARE RIGHT OR WRONG ON ITS SIZE THE THING STILL WOULD HAVE BEEN A FEARSOME CREATURE,, TO COME FACE TO FACE WITH THIS THING WOULD BE A HELLISH NIGHTMARE REGARDLESS,

[Incorrigible1]

WEATHER

Why are you shouting and how's your weather? I believe you meant "whether." RIGHT?

[MasterPo]

WEATHER THEY ARE RIGHT OR WRONG ON ITS SIZE THE THING STILL WOULD HAVE BEEN A FEARSOME CREATURE,, TO COME FACE TO FACE WITH THIS THING WOULD BE A HELLISH NIGHTMARE REGARDLESS,

I don't dispute the existance of the meg and it's enormous size and power compared to the present-day great white.

But it does raise a yellow flag in terms of the credibility if these numbers don't make sense. IOW, this article is beyond just saying these things once existed. It's in to specifics and if one aspect can be shown grossly incorrect then how can you trust the rest of what is said?

[thefinalfrontier]

Sorry about the caps being on folks, I did not notice it until it was already there, And the spelling I feel I am allowed to make a mistake here and there, lol, I agree with Masterpo that things dont add up as the figures in the story, Now it would still be a nightmare to be anywhere in the vicinity of this creature,

[Meg_Man]

I don't dispute the existance of the meg and it's enormous size and power compared to the present-day great white.

No one can dispute this fact. That shark was big and powerful enough to challenge whales.

But it does raise a yellow flag in terms of the credibility if these numbers don't make sense. IOW, this article is beyond just saying these things once existed. It's in to specifics and if one aspect can be shown grossly incorrect then how can you trust the rest of what is said?

This article is not about the weight of Megalodon. It mainly focuses on it's bite-force, as the scientists have conducted a fairly decent analysis and used advanced techniques to determine it with high accuracy before giving the final verdict.

Edited August 27, 2008 by Meg_Man