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megalon

Scientists Find The Megalodon Was Even Longer Than Humans Initially Believed 

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The megalodon is one of our planet’s most iconic ancient giants. When we picture a megalodon in our head, we all have an image of an unfathomably large shark that likely ran the ocean. Many movies and other forms of media have given us a fictional idea of what the beast looked like, however, the actual size of megalodons have been a mystery, as no full fossils have ever been discovered. 

Paleobiologist Dr. Kenshu Shimada and his team of coauthors/researchers recently published a study in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica that suggests the megalodon could have reached a length of up to 80 feet, and was much more slender than previously believed. 

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“Megalodon is not a simple, gigantic version of a great white shark. I think that we really have to move away from that concept.”

Dr. Shimada said that these findings can help scientists get a clearer picture of what the megalodon truly looked like, as well as how certain species that exist today evolved to be the size that they are. 

While scientists have never found a complete megalodon fossil, the various pieces that have been discovered indicate that the species lived between 15 million and 3.6 million years ago, long before human beings existed. 

Dr. Shimada explained how the megalodon is a part of the cartilaginous fish family, which means “they have a very poorly mineralized skeleton. There are no true bones that make the skeleton hard. On the other hand, their teeth are very hard, so they’re durable.” 

Due to the fact that the megalodon grew new teeth continuously throughout their whole life, finding their teeth has been one of the easier acquisitions. Their teeth also greatly resemble a great white shark, which is why scientists have often stated the two sharks likely had a similar “stout” body shape, according to CNN. 

Dr. Shimada and his team of colleagues began to question this observation after reviewing a paper published in August 2022. The paper showed a built digital 3D model of the megalodon where Shimada found that some of the mathematics behind the proportions didn’t seem correct. 

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“We kind of realized — click— that (the) great white shark is not a good model,” Shimada said. 

In order to reach their new conclusions, Dr. Shimada and his team reviewed the anatomy of 145 living shark species and 20 extinct shark species to create a comprehensive database specifically of the heads, bodies, and tails. 

“We have a vertebral column that’s known, and if we assume that that’s the complete trunk length, then why can’t we estimate the head length and a tail length based on modern day?” Shimada said.

Utilizing their research, the team found that the megalodon’s body was likely more like a lemon shark and less round. 

“Inadvertently, we discovered the mystery of why some vertebrates can get large, but some cannot. If you stay in a skinnier body, there is a better chance of being able to grow larger,” Shimada said. 

Dr. Stephen Godfrey, the curator of paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, who was not involved with the study, said: “The argument that they make, that a long, slender animal that size is more hydrodynamically efficient than if they’re really kind of fat and chunky, like if you scale up a living great white — that argument is a good one. But still, I’m not saying it gets stuck in my craw, but wow. I mean, that’s twice the size.” 

“What we really need is the discovery of the complete skeleton. The real test comes when we really have the complete skeleton, and then it will support or refute whether it was really skinny or stocky,” Shimada concluded.

ship

Cruise Ships Have Doubled In Size In The Past 20 Years, Environmental Groups Are Worried

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Cruise ships have doubled in size within the past two decades, creating a new pattern of creation that will likely lead to even larger ships in the future. Environmentalists are warning this trend can bring a lot of issues in the future, according to reports from various research groups.

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Evolutionary Study Shows Human Bodies Were Partially Shaped By Climate Change 

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As humans evolved, it’s become common knowledge that our body’s and brain’s have both increased in size as we developed into the Homo Sapiens we are today. The original Homo genus emerged about 300,000 years ago, and today we are much larger and have a brain three times as big as our human ancestors who lived a million years ago. 

Scientists have long debated why humans evolved the way that they did. There’s a multitude of potential explanations for why our bodies and minds grew into what they are today, but one of the newer possibilities has to do with climate change, and the role it’s played in our evolution overall. 

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A research team led by Cambridge University and Tübingen University in Germany have combined data on more than 300 human fossils from the Homo genus alongside climate models to establish a direct connection between the Earth’s climate and our evolutionary journey.

The study, published in Nature Communications, explained “what temperature, precipitation and other climate conditions each of the fossils, spanning the last million years, would have experienced when it was a living human. We found a strong link between temperature and body size, showing that climate was a key driver of body size during that period.”

“The colder it gets, the bigger the humans are. If you’re bigger, you have a bigger body – you are producing more heat but losing relatively less because your surface is not expanding at the same rate,” said Dr. Manuel Will, a Tübingen University researcher and author on the study.

“It’s not completely surprising, but it’s interesting to see that in this respect our evolution isn’t that different from other mammals. We face similar problems when it comes to gaining and losing heat, so we seem to have evolved in similar ways,” said Dr. Nick Longrich.

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The study also linked changes in climate to brain size among the Homo genus species, however, it found that the environment has a much greater impact on body size than brain size. 

“This phenomenon shows that body and brain size are under different selective pressures. This study really manages to detangle the fact that both brain and body size are increasing, but increasing for very different reasons.”

“The more stable [the climate] is, the larger brains are. You need a lot of energy to maintain a big brain – in stable environments, you find more stable food, so you likely have sufficient nutrition to give you that energy,” said Dr. Will.

Dr. Will also pointed out that evolution is ongoing, “but there are different drivers now to a million years ago. The past gives us clues about the future; we can learn from it. But we cannot simply extrapolate from it. While we are currently seeing that the climate is getting warmer, we cannot assume that our bodies will get smaller as a result.”