Could the monster shark still live?
A lone fisherman stands on a puny boat rocking out at sea, accompanied by chilling bass music in the background. As he points to the shore, the camera zooms in on a whale carcass with its tail completely severed. The video fades to black, and thick, serif letters fill the screen: “A bite that size couldn’t have come from any known shark.” The text then claims that local marine biologists identified the attacker as a megalodon.
This describes a clip from Discovery Channel’s documentary, Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, an ostensibly scientific documentary on the extinct otodus megalodon, also known as the megalodon. It was the largest fish ever known, with data analysis suggesting that adults averaged 10.2 metres in length and that the largest specimens could reach up to 17.9 metres. Their bite was equally impressive, with the largest known fossilized tooth measuring 17.8 centimetres—nearly three times the length of modern white shark teeth—and a bite diameter of three metres. Their fossils have been found in the waters surrounding all continents except for Antarctica. These records indicate the shark lived 23 million to three million years ago, from the early Miocene to the end of the Pliocene Epoch.
A popular theory is that the megalodon has survived and remains at large. However, this is unlikely, given the megalodon was a coastal shark that mostly inhabited the shallow areas close to shore. These areas are very well documented and often frequented by humans. If the megalodon remained alive, sightings would be common.
The existence of such an apex predator would also affect the entire ocean food chain. Modern whales, for example, are thought to have evolved to their gargantuan size after the megalodon’s extinction, with no large predators to hunt them anymore. In addition to physical sightings, scientists would have found prey animals with megalodon bite marks. Of course, no such evidence has been found.
We would also expect to find teeth, as sharks continuously shed them throughout their lifetime. However, no megalodon teeth have been discovered since they disappeared from the fossil record over three million years ago. These signs all point to the megalodon being well and truly extinct.
In the face of all this evidence, people continue to believe in its existence and report megalodon “sightings.” One such case turned out to be a school of small fish as opposed to one large fish, and another case was speculated to be a basking shark—a filter-feeding shark that is nearly the size of a double-decker bus.
What is it about these bygone creatures that charms us so? Is it simply the novelty factor, the sheer wonder and amazement for an animal which we’ve never seen before? Or is it due to its sheer size and ferocity? Whatever the reason, perhaps instead of wasting our time speculating about extinct species of the past, we should focus on those in the present. There are thousands of wondrous species that are endangered today, and if we are not careful to preserve them, they will not live to see tomorrow. They could very well become the next megalodons: beautiful specimens preserved in the fossil record which our descendants can only dream and fantasize about.