The megalodon was the largest known predator in the history of the Earth, at least on the basis of its weight. The sperm whale is a little longer, but also lighter. Over the years, the size estimations of the Megalodon shark have changed, as the science surrounding its evolution has progressed. One of the issues in estimating it’s true size is that the skeletons of sharks are made out of cartilage which does not fossilise very easily. This leaves the teeth as the only common fossils from which scientists may compute the size of this massive shark.
Recently, scientifically accepted estimates for this shark’s maximum size fall into the 60-70 foot range, with a weight of 50-70 tons.
Among the many ways that scientists use to determine how big was the Megalodon tooth was a study of the size of its teeth. Some Megalodon teeth tend to have a slant height of more than seven inches, which is a very large tooth. Using that tooth to help determine the body size of this animal is something that has been previously done in living sharks today, and those calculations were then used to determine an overall, expected size for Megalodon. Still, there may be some inaccuracies. One of the biggest problems in determining the size of something like Megalodon is that the sharks are made mostly of cartilage, not bone. Cartilage does not fossilise well, and so finding intact specimens is not quite possible. Instead, it is only possible to find pieces, like vertebrae and teeth, that can be used to attempt reconstruction.
Some of the common ways that scientists attempt to measure Megalodon size include enamel height, root width, largest anterior tooth height, and crown height. Each one of these methods can result in different findings and different beliefs regarding the size of the Megalodon. Now because of all the different methods of studying teeth that have been used to determine the true size of Megalodon, scientists are still not able to completely agree on how big the Megalodon actually was. All of them seem to have different findings with different proofs.
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