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Megalodon

Megalodon
The Discovery Channel put out a 'docufiction' suggesting that the gigantic shark C. megalodon
might still be alive in our oceans, but w hat does science have to say on the matter?
by Ry an Haupt
By Brian Dunning, Skeptoid Podcast
Episode 445, December 1 6, 201 4
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4445
Sharks are a group of Elasmobranch Chondrichthy ian fish that first ev olv ed some 420,000,000
y ears ago and today contains ov er 47 0 species which tend to be represented by a single image:
a sleek mindless killing machine. This images is often ty pified by the great white shark
(Carcharodon carcharias), the 20 foot predator capable of swimming at 35 miles per hour and
responsible for the largest number of fatal attacks on humans. And while the great white shark is
indeed the world's largest ex tant (meaning not ex tinct) predatory fish, our fossil record tells us
that in the past there was an ev en more monstrous beast lurking in the depths: Carcharocles
megalodon, often referred to by just its species name Megalodon, meaning large tooth. In 201 3,
The Discov ery Channel's Shark Week released a fictional documentary called Megalodon: The
Monster Shark Lives, which purported to present ev idence of the continued ex istence of the
prehistoric animal. Was the ev idence they presented an accurate representation of the current
scientific consensus, or can we say with all reasonable certainty that the oceans are no longer
inhabited by this awesome creature?
Accounts of giant triangular fossil teeth date back to the Renaissance, where they were
identified as glossopetrae, or petrified tongues of dragons or snakes. It took Danish naturalist
Nicolaus Steno to recognize that these were in fact the shark teeth, which he drew along with a
reconstruction of the head in his 1 667 book The Head of the Shark Dissected. Howev er, no name
was ascribed to the fossil until 1 835 in Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (Research on fossil
fish, published in 1 843) by Louis Agassiz when he dubbed it Carcharodon megalodon, placing it
in the same genus as the great white shark. Since then, the tax onomy of this animal has been
heav ily debated, with many modern researchers arguing that the animal actually belongs in not
just a different genus but a different family . They hav e mov ed the shark from family Lamnidae
(which contains the great white shark) to family Otodontidae with the new genus Carcharocles
but the same species name megalodon. To av oid confusion for the rest of piece I will refer to the
animal a C. megalodon, ex cept when talking about the documentary where they only use the
species appellation Megalodon.
C. megalodon teeth are indeed the largest shark teeth ev er found, with some measuring just
ov er 7 inches long. The teeth are roughly triangular in shape with small serrations around the
edge and look v ery much like a scaled-up modern great white tooth. Whale v ertebra from the
same time period hav e been found with gouge marks that potentially match C. megalodon teeth
suggesting that this animal filled the same niche that orca fill today : a whale hunter. Estimating
the size of C. megalodon is difficult and contentious, because the majority of the fossils found
are isolated teeth or disarticulated v ertebra. Sev eral different methods hav e been attempted to
estimate the length and body mass of the animal. Paleontologists are people too, and there's
glamor to be had in finding the "biggest" of any giv en group, but most reasonable estimates place
the length of the shark between 52 and 67 feet weighing in somewhere between 48 and 1 03
metric tons. Bite force estimates using the more conserv ativ e minimum and max imum
estimates for body mass were calculated to be between 1 08,51 4 Newtons (N) and 1 82,201 N, an
order of magnitude abov e the largest bit force for a great white shark at 1 8,21 6 N.
C. megalodon had a cosmopolitan distribution with fossils being found in Europe, Africa, North,
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South, and Central America, Australia and other islands around Oceania, Japan, India, and
sev eral islands in the Caribbean. These localities represent a v ariety of near-shore
env ironments but it is thought that the lifesty le of C. megalodon included time spent far offshore too, as seen in modern-day great white sharks. The oceans were generally warmer during
the time C. megalodon liv ed, and cooled with the closure of the Isthmus of Panama roughly 1 to
2 million y ears before the shark went ex tinct.
To summarize, based on the ev idence av ailable, paleontologists conclude that C. megalodon
was a large predatory coastal shark that went ex tinct 2.6 million y ears ago. We'll go back to the
ev idence for its ex tinction after rev iewing what the Discov ery Channel presented on the matter,
but first how is this animal actually represented in the fossil record?
In the fossil record, not all things preserv e equally . Taphonomy , which is the study of
ev ery thing that happens after the death of an organism up until it's discov ery by humans, has
classified a number of different filters that affect what we ev entually find in the fossil record.
Understanding these filters can help us better make sense of some of the more outlandish claims
of C. megalodon's continued ex istence.
Like all sharks, C. megalodon would hav e had a cartilaginous skeleton, instead of the calcified
boney skeletons found in the majority of animals we would think of as fish, like tuna or salmon.
Cartilage is softer and less mineralized than bone, thus less likely to preserv e in the fossil record,
meaning that the majority of shark fossils are known from their much harder teeth and v ertebral
discs. Sharks produce and shed a staggering number of teeth; up to 35,000 teeth in a lifetime for
some groups. The sheer number of teeth is itself bias in the fossil record: the more common
something is, the more likely we are to find it. Size also ex erts a similar bias. A large tooth is
more likely to be seen, noticed, and collected than a small tooth. The distribution of an
organism matters too. The more places something liv ed, the more odds there are of it being
preserv ed. Since we established the C. megalodon was a v ery ex tensiv e shark, this increases the
chances for preserv ation. The final relev ant bias is the difference between oceanic and
continental depositional env ironments. As might be ex pected, it is ex tremely difficult to collect
fossils from the deep ocean; whereas near-shore env ironments that are tectonically uplifted or
ex posed with dropping sea-lev els hav e a much better chance of being prospected by
paleontologists. The fact that this shark spent at least part of its life-cy cle near the coast giv es us
much better odds of finding its remains. With all that in mind, lets take a look at what the
Discov ery Channel had to say about the prospect of this shark still lurking in the deep dark seas.
First aired in 201 3 with a follow up in 201 4 Discov ery Channel'sMegalodon: The Monster Shark
Lives now ranks as the most v iewed Shark Week episode to date with 4,800,000 v iewers. The
docufiction is set in South Africa in April, 201 3, and begins with a sport fisherman fighting for
two hours to reel in a big fish, ev entually breaking his line. The boat is then attacked, the camera
is dropped, and we cut to a news report about the ev ents we just saw. The officials say it was a
whale breaching, but the wreckage doesn't support being hit from abov e, so they bring in ex pert
marine biologist Colin Drake (portray ed by South African actor Darron Mey er according to his
own Internet Mov ie Database page) to crack the case. Colin feels it's his mission to find the
deadly predator lurking in these waters so he can prev ent it from killing again. They introduce
v iewers to a supposed 30 foot great white shark named Submarine, a complete fabrication for an
animal that only grows to a still impressiv e 23 feet, but they did spin off the idea into its own
fake documentary that aired during Shark Week 201 4. They ev en interv iew a Submarine attack
surv iv or play ed by Katherine Crawford, an actress with a lower leg amputation.
The research team goes about try ing to find the legendary shark, but then a shark spotter sees a
whale getting attacked by something much bigger than Submarine. Nex t, Nazis. I'm not joking,
the marine biologist uncov ers a photo of a U-boat with a large fin sticking out of the water,
showing an animal possibly 60 feet long. He assumes it is the ex act same animal, patrolling the
waters for ov er 7 0 y ears. After showing a poorly done CGI Hawaiian home mov ie of a whale
with it's tail bitten off, they introduce the idea that this shark may be Megalodon, which they
immediately refer to as "the serial killer of the sea" and say ing it would eat "any thing and
ev ery thing in its path with ex treme prejudice." They also grossly misrepresent the size of
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Megalodon, say ing it could hav e grown to 1 00 feet ev en though the one they 're tracking they
estimate at 7 0 feet, which is still too big from what we actually know about the Megalodon. They
talk about how it lacked compassion, as though that's something we ex pect from predators
towards their prey ; as well as ex actly what color it was, something we hav e no way of knowing
from fossils of teeth and v ertebra. To further support their claim they refer to a Megalodon
tooth found in 1 0,000 y ear old sediment, much y ounger than when scientists say the animal
went ex tinct.
The show undermines paleontology by say ing their are only "unprov en theories" about
Megalodons ex tinction, as if it would be possible to definitiv ely prov e something from the deep
past in they way they suggest would be necessary to v erify the animal's ex tinction. When asked
why the animal would suddenly and publicly reappear now? The answer is climate change.
Warm up the oceans, it becomes easier for the shark to come back to it's old stomping ground to
eat whales. What it was doing in the interv ening 2.6 million y ears is left unsaid. Ev entually the
skeptical scientist character is conv inced by Collin and the hunt is on to find the shark. They
build a full-scale whale decoy and plan to dump 5,000 gallons of chum into the water. The show
finally reaches a climax when the Megalodon shows up, at night, prompting the div ers to hop in
a shark cage to tag the animal while taking some blurry shaky cam footage from inside the cage
in the now somehow chum-free sea before the cage disappears under the wav es. Both div ers
escape the cage, with the camera no less and the now-tagged shark immediately div es to 6,522
feet out of the range of their tracker.
"I believ e we just encountered megalodon." concludes Colin the biologist a moment before the
disclaimer pops up on the screen. The cav eat went by so quickly that I had to pause the show to
be able to read it. For one second each the lower third of the screen shows the following
statements:
"None of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film are affiliated with it in
any way , nor hav e they approv ed its contents."
"Though certain ev ents and characters in this film hav e been dramatized, sightings
of "Submarine" continue to this day ."
"Megalodon was a real shark. Legends of giant sharks persist all ov er the world.
There is still debate about what they may be."
Needless to say , none of the ev ents depicted actually occurred. Snopes.com ev en published an
article attempting to debunk the calv acade of nonsense presented by the show and ev en
cry tpozoologists who maintain the possibility of C. megalodons continued ex istence were
offended by the poor quality and representation of their field in the obv ious attempt at higher
ratings in lieu of accurate science. It would take much longer than a single episode of Skeptoid to
go point-by -point through the blatant, egregious, and purposeful errors from he dramatized
program. Rather, I'll touch on a few of the points related directly to the ex tinction of C.
megalodon, and ex plain what actual science has to say on the matter.
So what ev idence do we hav e the C. megalodon is really ex tinct? It may sound a bit obv ious, but
at a certain point in the geologic record, around 2.6 million y ears ago, the fossils simply stop.
The Discov ery Channel show mentions teeth found in Pleistocene sediments dated to only
1 0,000 y ears ago but most scientists agree that this is an ex ample of reworking, where a tooth
erodes out of it's original rock, and then is re-preserv ed in newer rock. It's the same reason we
occasionally find dinosaurs fossils just abov e the K-Pg boundary .
One weird quirk of paleontology that ev ery one acknowledges that the first and last occurrence
of a fossil are not likely to be the actual first and last appearance of said organism. Howev er,
using the best av ailable methods, researchers still conclude that C. megalodon went ex tinct
around 2.6 million y ears ago, which may sound like a precise date but on human timescales is
actually a broad number. This date coincides with the rise of our modern composition of whale
div ersity , including the gigantic filter feeders like the blue whale, which were smaller in general
during the time of C. megalodon. This is also around the time we start seeing orca in the fossil
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record, suggesting that there may hav e been intense competition driv ing C. megalodon to
ex tinction or that orca ev olv ed shortly after the ex tinction of the shark to fill that particular
niche in the ecosy stem, a role they still hold today .
Some people might wonder why it matters if someone wants to entertain the fantasy of a
monster shark lurking in the depths of our oceans. The problem is that this kind of thinking
perpetuates an image of sharks as dangerous killers to be feared and disliked. While there are
certainly some scary sharks out there, this is a huge misrepresentation of the group as a whole.
Of the more than 47 0 species of shark, only a dozen or so (~2.5%) could be considered
dangerous to humans, and of those dozen only three (great whites harks, tiger sharks, and bull
sharks) hav e fatal attacks on humans in the double digits. These statistics are for what are
considered "unprov oked attacks" where the human has not antagonized the animal, but is
merely mistaken for food. The fact of the matter is that for the majority of shark species, a
human in the water doesn't look any thing like their normal food, and will simply be ignored or
av oided. If any thing, sharks hav e much much more to fear from us. While about a dozen people
are killed by sharks each y ear (although recent estimates looking at just 2006-201 0 bring that
number down to four) we humans are responsible for killing ov er 1 1 ,000 sharks per hour
resulting in an estimated 1 00 million sharks killed each y ear. Most of these kills come in the
form of 'finning' wherein the shark is caught, their dorsal fin is cut off, and the still liv ing animal
is tossed back into the ocean where it will hav e zero chance of surv iv al. The fins are then used in
shark-fin soup. I would argue that one of the main reasons less is done to combat this cruel and
unsustainable practice is that public perception of sharks, in part fueled by Discov ery Channel's
docufiction where they are literally called serial killers, maintains that sharks are somehow
bad or ev il, instead of just predatory animals try ing to surv iv e in an increasingly polluted and
ov erfished natural habitat. Sharks are no more or less ev il than any other of the my riad forms of
life to ev olv e on this planet, and instead of fear-mongering about sharks no longer with us, I
think we should be celebrating the amazing div ersity of modern sharks aliv e in our oceans
today .
Ultimately , it's a shame that an organization that began as such a great promoter of science to
the general public has stray ed so laughably far from their original goal. If there's one lesson that
we can take away from fictional documentaries like Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives it's
that if a program is pruporting to teach the audience science, but uses audio and v isuals to elicit
fear and rev ulsion instead of awe and wonder, then y ou hav e v ery good reasons to be skeptical.
Written by Ry an Haupt
201 4 Skeptoid Media, Inc.

References & Further Reading

Agassiz, Louis. Recherches sur les poissons fossiles. Neuchatel: Petitpierre, 1 843.
Chernov , Joe. "Man Bites Shark." Helicopter to Work. Joe Chernov , 27 Mar. 201 3. Web. 1 5 Dec.
201 4. <http://jchernov .com/post/4644583447 0/man-bites-shark>
N/A. "Megalodon: The Monster Shark Liv es." Snopes.com: Megalodon: The Monster Shark
Lives. snopes.com, 1 0 Aug. 201 4. Web. 1 5 Dec. 201 4.
<http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/megalodon.asp>
N/A. "Megalodon: The Monster Shark." Discovery Channel. Discov ery Channel, 4 Aug. 201 3.
Web. 1 5 Dec. 201 4. <http://www.discov ery .com/tv -shows/shark-week/v ideos/megalodonmonster-shark/>
One, With, Jeff. "Prominent Cry ptozoologists Denounce Megalodon: The Monster Shark Liv es."
Houston Press Blogs. Houston Press, 8 Aug. 201 3. Web. 1 5 Dec. 201 4.
<http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack/201 3/08/cry ptozoologists_megalodon.php?
page=2>
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Pimiento, C., Clements, C.F. "When Did Carcharocles megalodon Become Ex tinct? A New
Analy sis of the Fossil Record." PLoS ONE. 22 Oct. 201 4, V olume 9, Number 1 0: e1 1 1 086.

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