BBC SCIENCE FOCUS - A bold new study claims we’ve got the megalodon’s shape all wrong. According to the research, the monstrous prehistoric fish known as the megalodon (Otodus megalodon) may have been more of a long and slender shark than the chunky beast depicted by Hollywood.
Nose to tail, the megalodon is generally thought to have been 15-20 metres (50-65 ft) long. It roamed the Earth’s seas between 15 to 3.6 million years ago, but very little evidence exists in the fossil record – with only teeth and vertebrae available rather than any complete skeletons.
The new study was led by scientists in the USA, from DePaul University and the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
“This new finding marks a major scientific breakthrough in the quest to decipher what megalodon looked like,” said first author and UCR PhD candidate Phillip Sternes.