Megalodon: Facts About The Long-Extinct, Massive Shark

Megalodon: Facts About The Long-Extinct, Massive Shark Megalodon was a very massive shark. The megalodon, which became extinct millions of years ago, was the world's biggest shark and one of the largest fish ever recorded. Otodus megalodon means "big tooth," and for good reason: its huge teeth are nearly three times larger than those of a current great white shark. The preserved bones and teeth of the megalodon shark provide scientists with important information about what the monster was like and when it died. While the blockbuster 2018 film "The Meg" sets modern people against massive megalodon sharks, the beast most likely died out before humans even existed. However, because the fossil record is sparse, pinpointing the precise year when the Megalodon went extinct is challenging. In 2014, a team of researchers from the University of Zurich used optimum linear estimates to calculate the age of megalodon fossils. Their findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, show that the majority of the fossils date from the middle Miocene to the Pliocene epochs (15.9 million - 2.6 million years ago). According to the authors, all evidence of the creature's existence stopped 2.6 million years ago in the present fossil record. According to the University of California Museum of Paleontology, our first Homo sapiens ancestors appeared barely 2.5 million years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch. A relatively small percentage of the data from the Zurich study—6 out of 10,000 simulations—showed a 1% likelihood that these enormous sharks would still be alive. That likelihood appears to be minimal, and the researchers concluded in the report that they disregarded "popular assertions of O. megalodon's present-day existence." Scientists concur that megalodon sharks are extinct since no recent proof of the monster has been unearthed — not even fossils younger than 2.6 million years old.

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