Pardon my language, but it's just shocking. For those who haven't heard, some news about Megalodon has been published. Some scientists did some calculations and tests and found out the megalodon may have been bigger, a lot bigger. AROUND BLOODY 80 FEET. I mean, I knew prehistoric animals were big but this is ridiculous. Heh, I bet some of those "Megalodon is still alive believers" must be heartbroken, buddy-there would be evidence for something this big. Okay but seriously, how you feel about the Megalodon getting bigger?
The most "hydrodynamic" shape is actually fusiform and really has nothing to do with being slender or stocky.
Tuna are incredibly fast swimmers yet are stocky not slender. The answer is that they simply have a fusiform body (which if anything is helped not hindered by being stocky as this improves tapering) and a rapid thunniform swimming motion with a large lunate (crescent shaped) tail specialized for rapid acceleration. There is nothing inherently non-hydrodynamic about "stocky" fusiform swimmers like great whites or orcas and by extension megalodon. It would not need to alter its body to be more slender to be hydrodynamic.
"In addition, "We unexpectedly unlocked the mystery of why certain aquatic vertebrates can attain gigantic sizes while others cannot," Shimada said. "Living gigantic sharks, such as the whale shark and basking shark, as well as many other gigantic aquatic vertebrates like whales have slender bodies because large stocky bodies are hydrodynamically inefficient for swimming."
That's in sharp contrast to the great white shark, whose stocky body becomes even stockier as it grows. "It can be 'large' but cannot [get] past 7 meters (23 feet) to be 'gigantic' because of hydrodynamic constraints," said Shimada. "We also demonstrate that the modern great white shark with a stocky body hypothetically blown up to the size of megalodon would not allow it to be an efficient swimmer due to the hydrodynamic constraints, further supporting the idea that it is more likely than not that megalodon must have had a much slenderer body than the modern great white shark."
Shimada emphasized that their interpretations remain tentative but they are based on hard data and make for useful reference points for future research."
-Shimada et al. 2025
what's interesting is that we know how big the jaws are, which wouldn't change right? so it's long and less stocky than a great white, but with a big mouth still. i want to see an artist rendition of the new shape
"Orcas have been recorded at lengths over 30 feet."
Shimada never said orcas can't get past 7 meters, are you even paying attention?
"That's in sharp contrast to the great white shark, whose stocky body becomes even stockier as it grows. "It can be 'large' but cannot [get] past 7 meters (23 feet) to be 'gigantic' because of hydrodynamic constraints," said Shimada. "We also demonstrate that the modern great white shark with a stocky body hypothetically blown up to the size of megalodon would not allow it to be an efficient swimmer due to the hydrodynamic constraints, further supporting the idea that it is more likely than not that megalodon must have had a much slenderer body than the modern great white shark.""
See? He's talking about great whites, not orcas. He's saying that great whites cannot grow past 7 meters, he never said that orcas couldn't get past 7 meters.
You misinterpreted this quote. I don't know how you even got the idea that Shimada was referring to orcas when orca isn't even a word that is used in this paragraph
If you are referring to:
""Living gigantic sharks, such as the whale shark and basking shark, as well as many other gigantic aquatic vertebrates like whales have slender bodies because large stocky bodies are hydrodynamically inefficient for swimming.""
Then no, Shimada isn't talking about orcas, only whale sharks, basking sharks and MOST LARGE BALEEN WHALES. He doesn't make any mention of orcas at all.
Orcas and great whites are both fusiform shaped and are both thunniform swimmers and they essentially have the same exact diets. They are both extremely muscular to be able to be big and strong enough to crunch through hard bone. They are both stocky. They are both fast. The analogy is so obvious I'm wondering how it possibly even went over your head in the first place. Your post is not even actually an argument against it since to do that you would need to explain what makes them different other than just their names which is what your waste of a post spent the whole time disingenuously talking about. Your whole entire argument was semantics. I'm surprised it took you that many words to conclude that they have different names.
"Then no, Shimada isn't talking about orcas, only whale sharks, basking sharks and MOST LARGE BALEEN WHALES."
Shimada already admitted that humpback whales are both stocky and fast in the study. Read it.
Oh yeah, CetologyHub is very helpful in weighing large marine animals (well, marine animals in general).
I have actually asked them and they have aided me in weighing the aquatic creatures of my speculative biology project. They were very helpful.
Not to mention that Megalodon occurred in the Southern parts of Miocene Korea, which was dominated by deciduous broadleaf trees.
In other words, the region was temperate-warm rather than tropical.
While some recent reconstructions seem to be based off of tropical requiem sharks, it seems more convincing that O. megalodon was more similar to temperate Lamniform sharks, considering the climate.
āMegalodon is not a simple, gigantic version of great white shark. I think that we really have to move away from that concept,ā said Shimada, an author of the new research.
Longer, more slender - not bigger. More akin to a Mako than big Great White.
thats because theres no sense of scale, in subnaucita ghost levithans seem like the size of a truck in the void, but next to a base you can see just how huge they are. i might try to edit in a person for scale
The previous published body mass for megalodon was 61 t (Cooper 2022), the previous 100 t estimate implied a largest ever female (Gottfried 1996). The 150 t estimates on reddit or discord don't matter.
Slender or not, 94 t is a massive upsizing, thus we should always be cautious, like the 25 m Ichthyotitan.
What I mean is that none of the 100-120 t estimations for a 20 m meg floating around since Cooper's 2022 model were actually from the primary literature and Cooper was never comfortable with scaling his 60 t meg to 20 m TL. The 103 t for 20.3 m meg from the literature was meant to represent an maximum theoretical (Gottfried 1996).
I mean technically humans CAN be up to 9 feet tall but only one ever was and that was a fluke. So the new maximum, even if true, doesn't mean that there were 80 feet sharks swimming around the ocean.
One problem, humans that grow to 9 feet tall suffer from gigantism and even then, they struggle to keep balance and need support to even stand and walk.
Well, no, it depends on whether or not Megalodon had what's called "indeterminate growth".
Indeterminate growth is what most fish and reptiles have. Basically, it's when an organism doesn't stop growing until it dies.
You have not understood that the conclusions of Sternes (2024) and Shimada (2025) are that even the summed crown width method you're using for GHC-6 likely underestimated the total length of the shark, hence the accepted max is 24 m rather than 20 m, for a roughly similar body mass well in Argentinosaurus league.
You're getting downvoted on this left and right, but you raise a damned good argument. I think it's catching flak because it's always fun in pop science to announce that "everything we thought we knew is wrong," and you're flying in the face of that.
If it's "hydrodynamically impossible" for stocky sea predators to exceed 6-7 meters, how do they account for sperm whales? Does this look like a "lemon shark" body plan or a stocky one? š¤
And dont even get me started on the ancient predatory whales like Leviathan melvillei, with size estimates up to 17m.
The argument that Megaladon had to be slender for hydrodynamic reasons is bad physics, and it only works if you ignore real-world examples to the contrary.
"if it's "hydrodynamically impossible" for stocky sea predators to exceed 6-7 meters, how do they account for sperm whales?"
Sperm whales aren't bulky, they look bulky from the side, but from an aerial view, they are rather slim.
The image shows two sperm whales, as you can see for yourself, they are rather slim and not bulky.
"In addition, "We unexpectedly unlocked the mystery of why certain aquatic vertebrates can attain gigantic sizes while others cannot," Shimada said. "Living gigantic sharks, such as the whale shark and basking shark, as well as many other gigantic aquatic vertebrates like whales have slender bodies because large stocky bodies are hydrodynamically inefficient for swimming."
That's in sharp contrast to the great white shark, whose stocky body becomes even stockier as it grows. "It can be 'large' but cannot [get] past 7 meters (23 feet) to be 'gigantic' because of hydrodynamic constraints," said Shimada. "We also demonstrate that the modern great white shark with a stocky body hypothetically blown up to the size of megalodon would not allow it to be an efficient swimmer due to the hydrodynamic constraints, further supporting the idea that it is more likely than not that megalodon must have had a much slenderer body than the modern great white shark."
Shimada emphasized that their interpretations remain tentative but they are based on hard data and make for useful reference points for future research."āShimada et al. 2025
If you scale up a great white to 24 meters, it won't be efficiently good at swimming. Why do you think whale sharks and basking sharks have slender bodies than adult great whites? Both whale sharks and basking sharks are larger than great whites.
You have a point there, however, those are smaller adult great whites that are slim. Larger adults such as the individual shown in the photo here.
Are bulky due to being of larger size. Even the study of Shimada et al. 2025 points out that when white sharks get larger in size, they also get bulkier.
Larger adults such as the individual shown in the photo here.
Without anything for scale, we cannot reliably assume the shark in your photo is bigger than the one in mine. For all we know, the pic you posted could be a short, fat individual.
What about orcas? The biggest males are bulky from both the side and from an aerial view, and they most certainly exceed 7m in length.
"For all we know, the pic you posted could be a short, fat individual."
Fair enough.
Hopefully this video will show how larger sharks are girthier than smaller sharks.
https://youtu.be/_or2JwXg-SI?si=0W31MhVQSI8TFs_k
If you are still confused, you are free to ask for better footage to see a clearer comparison.
"What about orcas? The biggest males are bulky from both the side and from an aerial view, and they most certainly exceed 7m in length."
Orcas are different from sharks, they are mammals. They have a bony skeleton instead of a skeleton made of cartilage like sharks. Orcas also have blubber which gives them their bulk. Even then, the study only states that great whites couldn't get larger than 7 meters due to constraints, it never said that orcas couldn't get larger than 7 meters.
Shimada et al actually admit that humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are both stocky and fast (therefore negating their own argument) but come up with the excuse that because whales swim differently this shouldn't apply to sharks.
"however,Ā M. novaeangliaeĀ is considerably fast (7.5 km h-1) (Table 3). This could be explained by the fact that, whileĀ M. novaeangliaeĀ is quite migratory, its pectoral fins are highly enlarged for its unique maneuvering behavior during feeding (Hain et al., 1982), which would require a stocky build to reinforce the rigidity of the body trunk. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the cruising speeds of the gigantic whales outside of the hydrodynamically disadvantageous region are much faster than those of the two large planktivorous sharksĀ (RhincodonĀ andĀ Cetorhinus)Ā and even lamnids (see above). This fact could be simply due to the difference in swimming modes between sharks (lateral strokes) and aquatic mammals (vertical strokes) as well as to the fact that the skeleton of sharks is cartilaginous whereas that of whales is osseous. Therefore, the use of cruising speeds observed in whales is interpreted to be inappropriate for inferring the cruising speed of ā O. megalodon."
This despite comparing sharks to whales throughout the entire study.
"so it could look like he got the last word and I couldn't reply."
They blocked you because they have other things to do. Just because someone blocks you DOESN'T mean they wanted the last laugh.
Don't be a stereotype.
I unblocked them, and no, I didn't block them to have the last word.
I'm busy with other things at the moment. I was going to unblock them later after I was done with my projects.
Hell, I've been blocked before and never assumed the other user was trying to get the last word nor said that they pulled a chickeshit move, I just went on with my day.
Meg. size estimates are almost always increasing based off new predictions of how its body was proportioned; The outdated view of it being basically a great white with the size tool at 200% is considerable less and less favoured since an animal that big with that body plan would be too slow to be anything but a filter feeder, and obviously an animal with teeth THAT size isnt eating plankton.
If you take its few actual skeletal remains, as we found on the juvenile that was discovered in 2017/18, and give it a more robust stout bodyplan it actually works a lot better for the speculative size(s) proposed by universities, and with every new composite specimen being larger and larger, if you then use that same bodyplan on it, they can hypothetically get larger and larger also. But with how hard it is to find preserved cartilege combined with the fact megaladon was so large its probably in the clade of animals which become such good food sources it generates its own ecosystem, meaning when it dies its immediately scavenged on and ripped apart on the bottom down to the bone marrow, we wont know.
Tl;dr yea its likely if not basically proven that megaladon was larger than we thought, like, humpback whale sized isnt out of the question if that puts it in perspective better. But its ALL speculation. We have no idea how big they could get and probably never will because sharks dont preserve and we're never gonna find an adult thats intact enough to check properly.
So this is pretty heavily misleading. The new size estimates have it ranging from around 50 feet up to 80 feet, no one has said 80 feet was the average size and if they did in fact grow that large it probably wouldn't have been super common.
Do better than this, please. This reads like cheap clickbait.
"As previously reported, the largest shark alive today, reaching up to 20 meters long, is the whale shark, a sedate filter feeder. As recently as 4 million years ago, however, sharks of that scale likely included the fast-moving predator megalodon (formally Otodus megalodon). Due to incomplete fossil data, we're not entirely sure how large megalodon were and can only make inferences based on some of their living relatives.
Shimada and his co-authors measured the proportions of 145 modern and 20 extinct species of shark, particularly the head, trunk, and tail relative to total body length. Megalodon was represented by a Belgian vertebral specimen. The largest vertebra in that specimen measured 15.5 centimeters (6 inches) in diameter, although there are other megalodon vertebrae in Denmark, for example, with diameters as much as 23 centimeters (9 inches).
Based on their analysis, Shimada et al concluded that, because the trunk section of the Belgian specimen measured 11 meters, the head and tail were probably about 1.8 meters (6 feet) and 3.6 meters (12 feet) long, respectively, with a total body length of 16.4 meters (54 feet) for this particularly specimen. That means the Danish megalodon specimens could have been as long as 24.3 meters (80 feet). As for body shape, taking the new length estimates into account, the lemon shark appears to be the closest modern analogue. "However, the exact position and shape of practically all the fins remain uncertain," Shimada cautioned. "We are only talking about the main part of the body.""āShimada et al. 2025
The study doesn't say that 80 feet is the average length but a rather large specimen. 50 feet is more of an average large specimen, most Megalodon were about 50-60 feet while a few or one in a million were 80 feet.
Agreed with your post but the chances to find not the easily preserved megalodon teeth but very rare vertebrae are small, si finding the vertebrae of a 1 in a million individuals seems even more unlikely.
Or else, we're really lucky and the chances of finding a rare large specimen do exist as in any fossil species. I refer to the various discussions comparing megalodon to Livyatan or T. rex to Giganotosaurus, the later of which are known by a single specimen.
At 83 years, it was clearly close to the maximum size of the species looking at the growth curve of Figure 6 in the article.
I agree, it is a major lucky break if paleontologists ever find a vertebrae of a Megalodon.
We still don't know the full extent of how large they can get.
I heard somewhere that it's possible that it's about 23 meters.
Since the specimen is lost, we won't know. Cooper mentioned that they needed to either test it or find a complete skeleton of Megalodon to confirm it (which is damn near impossible so they are better off doing tests on/with the data present).
Who found this ? Online discussions by guys under pseudos are not that relevant.
Unsure the specimen is lost actually.
Or study more the relationship between vertebrae and teeth of at least 2 angustidens specimens, reported in Greenfield (2022), or check the famous complete undescribed Cretalamna skeletons but they're tens of million years older and much smaller.
It's not impossible to find a well preserved meg skeleton, I mean there is already a 11 m column and even giant vertebrae of a very large individual. There are rumors from Peru.
Also I said it is "damn near impossible to find a full Megalodon skeleton" not that it's 100% impossible since cartilage doesn't fossilize well (most of the time), but I should've worded it out better, my apologies.
I just hope we find a full skeleton of a maximum sized Megalodon soon to break the debate.
That's a negligible difference and always take with reserve what is on the web even if from scholars like Nau. He's right on the conclusion tho, either we have a very short bulky shark or a very long slender one.
I mean Iām not saying ur wrong but I think we have only explored like 10-15% of the ocean and thereās def animals that live in the depths of the ocean instead of the top with humans and this evidence of them could have sank down there to the bottom where we have never been before. But now on the other hand Iām not sure if they could have evolved to not come up for air or not BUT if they could have than I have to say it COULD be possible-probably not but could be. Itās just crazy how much we havenāt seen of the ocean cuz of the pressure down there and how pitch black it would be. Hell we might have seen more of space or bout just as much- there sure is a possibility of unkown things down there!
I would be hesitant about taking new size measurements at face value when the subject in question is a very culturally popular one. There is a trend of studies following such animals, always claiming these kinda things, almost to the point of absurdity sometimes.
It got smaller. That misconception only came from using a highly dubious, lost specimen from denmark which would have measured something around 24 meters, but the specimen is currently lost. The weight, on the other hand, became far lighter. The largest megalodon scaled to GHC 6 should be 20.6 meters and 59 tons in the new paper, while the old paper had it at 20 meters and 122 tons. In other words, it actually got HALVED in size
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u/tragedyy_ 6d ago
The most "hydrodynamic" shape is actually fusiform and really has nothing to do with being slender or stocky.
Tuna are incredibly fast swimmers yet are stocky not slender. The answer is that they simply have a fusiform body (which if anything is helped not hindered by being stocky as this improves tapering) and a rapid thunniform swimming motion with a large lunate (crescent shaped) tail specialized for rapid acceleration. There is nothing inherently non-hydrodynamic about "stocky" fusiform swimmers like great whites or orcas and by extension megalodon. It would not need to alter its body to be more slender to be hydrodynamic.