The enormous extinct shark species generally known as the megalodon has captured the curiosity of scientists and most people alike, even inspiring the 2018 blockbuster movie The Meg. The species lived some 3.6 million years in the past and no full skeleton has but been discovered. So there was appreciable debate amongst paleobiologists about megalodon’s dimension, physique form and swimming velocity, amongst different traits.

Whereas some researchers have in contrast megalodon to a huge model of the stocky nice white shark,  others imagine the species had a extra slender physique form. A brand new paper printed within the journal Palaeontologia Electronica bolsters the latter viewpoint, additionally drawing conclusions concerning the megalodon’s physique mass, swimming velocity (based mostly on hydrodynamic rules), and progress patterns.

As previously reported, the most important shark alive at the moment, reaching as much as 20 meters lengthy, is the whale shark, a sedate filter feeder. As lately as 4 million years in the past, nonetheless, sharks of that scale possible included the fast-moving predator megalodon (formally Otodus megalodon). Resulting from incomplete fossil information, we’re not fully positive how massive megalodons have been and may solely make inferences based mostly on a few of their residing family members.

Due to analysis published in 2023 on its fossilized tooth, we’re now pretty assured that megalodon shared one thing else with these family members: it wasn’t fully cold-blooded and stored its physique temperature above that of the encompassing ocean. Most sharks, like most fish, are ectothermic, that means that their physique temperatures match these of the encompassing water. However a handful of species, a part of a gaggle termed mackerel sharks, are endothermic: They’ve a specialised sample of blood circulation that helps retain among the warmth their muscle tissues produce. This permits them to maintain some physique elements at a better temperature than their environment.

Of specific relevance to this newest paper is a 2022 study by Jack Cooper of Swansea College within the UK and his co-authors. In 2020, the crew reconstructed a 2D mannequin of the megalodon, basing the scale on comparable current shark species. The researchers adopted up in 2022 with a reconstructed 3D mannequin, extrapolating the scale from a megalodon specimen (a vertebral column) in Belgium. Cooper concluded {that a} megalodon would have been a stocky, highly effective shark—measuring some 52 toes (16 meters) in size with a physique mass of 67.86 tons—in a position to execute bursts of excessive velocity to assault prey, very similar to the considerably smaller nice white shark.