Megalodon- a giant transoceanic predator

In news– Recently, researchers have found new evidence about the life of one of the biggest predatory animals of all time, the Megalodon.

What does the new study say?

According to the new study, the Megalodon could “completely ingest, and in as few as five bites,” a prey as big as the killer whale.
It says that the Megalodon was bigger than a school bus at around 50 feet from nose to tail.
In comparison, the great white sharks of the present can grow to a maximum length of around 15 feet.
Using their digital model, the researchers have suggested that the giant transoceanic predator would have weighed around 70 tonnes or as much as 10 elephants.
They roamed the oceans an estimated 23 million to 2.6 million years ago.
Using a previously established relationship between speed and body mass, researchers calculated that the Megalodon had an average cruising speed faster than sharks today.
3D modelling research was used as the Megalodon’s skeleton is made of soft cartilage that doesn’t fossilize well.
Using fossils that were available, including mainly teeth and a rare collection of vertebrae that has been with a Belgium museum since the 1860s, computer modelling was used to reconstruct the entire body of the extinct and largest known macropredatory shark.
Megalodon, meaning “big tooth”, is an extinct species of mackerel shark that lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago, from the Early Miocene to the Pliocene epochs.
It was formerly thought to be a member of the family Lamnidae and a close relative of the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias).
However, it is now classified into the extinct family Otodontidae, which diverged from the great white shark during the Early Cretaceous.