POPULAR MECHANICS - We’re not quite sure if a new description of the extinct megalodon shark makes it more or less frightening. The fresh theory—described in a theory that was recently published in Palaeontologia Electronica—claims that the ancient creature was longer and slenderer than previously thought, with new estimates putting the size of the potentially 3.5-million-year-old fish around 50-65 feet in length.
We’re guessing that no matter exactly how the megalodon looked, it made for an imposing sight.
“Our team reexamined the fossil record, and discovered the megalodon was more slender and possibly even longer than we thought,” Phillip Sternes, a University of California, Riverside biologist and the paper’s first author, said in a statement. “Therefore, a better model might be the modern mako shark. It still would have been a formidable predator at the top of the ancient marine food chain, but it would have behaved differently based on this new understanding of its body.”