When Did Megalodon Go Extinct?

When Did Megalodon Go Extinct?

By Ross Pomeroy in Real Clear Science

 

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 Despite what you may have heard during Shark Week, Megalodon -- the largest shark that ever lived -- is extinct. At least, that's what all of the best scientific evidence tells us.

The fossil record also clues us in to other fascinating facts about Megalodon. The giant weighed between 53 and 65 tons and grew to as much as 60 feet in length! Additionally, its teeth were over seven inches long, it could bite down with a force between 10.8 and 18.2 tons, and it frequently consumed large whales!

As exciting as it might be to encounter one of these behemoths on a fishing outing (and of course live to tell the tale), this is not at all likely to happen. One, you probably wouldn't survive, and two, you'd be a little late by roughly 2.6 million years.

That's the most complete estimate for when Megalodon went extinct, courtesy of a new analysis from Catalina Pimiento at the Florida Museum of Natural History and Christopher F. Clements at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, published to PLoS ONE.

A previous estimate dated Megalodon's extinction to as recently as 1.5 million years ago, but the reports upon which that number are based are widely deemed unreliable. Pimiento and Clements arrived at the new number by combining the most recent, confirmed records of Megalodon fossil findings from the scientific literature and applying a probabilistic model to determine the most likely extinction date.

The model, termed Optimal Linear Estimation, has previously only been used to ascertain the extinction dates of modern species, so it's unknown how well it will apply to a species that lived millions of years ago. But given that the charismatic Megalodon has an abundant fossil record, the researchers are confident that their estimate will hold up, especially considering that the date of Megalodon's extinction has never before been quantitatively assessed.

The precise reasons for Megalodon's extinction are any paleontologist's guess. Ocean cooling and a drop in sea level may have been to blame, or possibly a decline in the mega shark's food supply -- large whales. Competition from killer whales may also have contributed.

Source: Pimiento C, Clements CF (2014) When Did Carcharocles megalodon Become Extinct? A New Analysis of the Fossil Record. PLoS ONE 9(10): e111086. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0111086