The megalodon—the most important shark to have ever lived—might not seemed like an overgrown nice white shark, as it's usually portrayed, scientists have stated.

In a examine printed within the journal Historic Biology on February 6, scientists from the Division of Organic Sciences at DePaul College in Chicago stated that there was no proof to assist or refute any assertions concerning the looks of Otodus megalodon.

Generally referred to as the megalodon, this species of shark first appeared on Earth round 20 million years in the past earlier than going extinct an estimated 3.6 million years in the past. It's thought they might develop to round 60 toes in size.

Quite a few components are believed to have led to the disappearance of the megalodon. These embrace being outcompeted for prey by nice white sharks, adjustments to sea ranges and the discount of coastal habitats.

Typical depictions and assumptions about what the shark seemed like had been based mostly on fossils of megalodon tooth and vertebrae, and the form of present sharks like fashionable nice white sharks, which lived alongside megalodons, earlier than the bigger animals turned extinct.

Fashionable references to the megalodon resembling these discovered within the 2018 motion film The Meg present the animal wanting like an enormous model of latest nice white sharks.

The paper's authors stated these assumptions lacked proof. Analyzing two-dimensional charting of the evolution of shark our bodies, the authors strongly recommended that there was no relationship between the the charts utilized in earlier research and the projected form of the megalodon.

"Though it's nonetheless attainable that O. megalodon might have resembled the trendy nice white shark or lamnids, our outcomes counsel that the two-dimensional method doesn't essentially decisively permit the physique kind reconstruction for O. megalodon," Jake J. Wooden, one of many examine authors, stated in a press release.

The paper instantly challenged the assumptions made in a separate examine printed in 2020, which inferred the form of a megalodon based mostly on 5 dwelling species of sharks—together with nice white sharks.

That examine, the scientists stated, included a doubtful software of a bracketing method that charted the evolutionary historical past of sharks to deduce what megalodons seemed like.

"All beforehand proposed physique types of Otodus megalodon ought to be considered speculations from the scientific standpoint," Phillip C. Sternes, one other co-author of the analysis, stated in a press release.

"Any significant dialogue concerning the physique type of O. megalodon would require the invention of no less than one full, or practically full, skeleton of the species within the fossil report," Wooden stated.

Kenshu Shimada holds a megalodon tooth
Paleobiologist Kenshu Shimada holds a megalodon tooth. Shimada was certainly one of a workforce of scientists who stated that earlier analysis that recommended what megalodons seemed like weren't based mostly on adequate proof. JEFF CARRION/DEPAUL UNIVERSITY