Kenshu Shimada: Last News

great white sharks, a new study has shown.And all it took was to analyse the teeth of both creatures.The Megalodon is often the topic of dodgy science films found on the SyFy channel, but it has always been a fact that the 65ft (20 metre) giant shark swam our oceans between 23 million and 3.6 million years ago.But it now appears, thanks to a study conducted by Chicago's DePaul University professor Kenshu Shimada that a more modern beast killed it off.Despite being around three times smaller, the Great White Shark is now thought to have ended the reign of the Megalodon.Co-author of the report, Professor Shimada said: “These results likely imply at least some overlap in prey hunted by both shark species."Analysis of zinc levels found they were at the top of the food chain - meaning nothing ate them.An international team generated a database of values across 20 living and prehistoric shark species ranging from aquarium and wild individuals - to Megalodon.And fellow co-author Prof Michael Griffiths, of William Paterson University, New Jersey, said: “Our results show both Megalodon and its ancestor were indeed apex predators - feeding high up their respective food chains.“But what was truly remarkable is zinc isotope values from Early Pliocene shark teeth from North Carolina suggest largely overlapping trophic levels of early great white sharks with the much larger Megalodon.”Megalodon was already six and a half feet at birth - dwarfing most humans.

shark that ever lived' — is now thought to have increased in size the further from the equator it went after fossil analysis.The study found fossilised teeth from higher latitudes belonged to the most colossal individuals. Their broad and triangular seven inch fangs were serrated like steak knives, and were as big as a man's hand.

shark that ever lived' — may have been even more terrifying than thought, according to new research.Many representations of the massive sea monster, which dominated the oceans until becoming extinct 3.6 million years ago, have been largely influenced by human imaginationOne of the most famous examples is the ship-dwarfing creature from 2018 sci-fi film 'The Meg' starring action man Jason Statham, which sees the Megalodon return to terrorise the modern world.But now scientists have said that there is no way at the moment to know for sure what it would have looked like — as only its teeth and jaws have ever been found.The change comes as researchers begin to doubt whether today's great white shark is an appropriate species to compare the Megalodon fossils with.Co author Jake Wood, a graduate student in the lab of Professor Kenshu Shimada, of DePaul University, Chicago, said: "It is still possible Megalodon could have resembled the modern Great White shark or lamnids."But our results suggest the two-dimensional approach does not necessarily decisively allow the body form reconstruction for Megalodon.": "Any meaningful discussion about the body form of Megalodon would require the discovery of at least one complete, or nearly complete, skeleton of the species in the fossil record."While it could be disappointing for some to find new doubt cast over the appearance of an infamous beast of the prehistoric seas, one scientist has said that the new uncertainty is in fact hugely exciting.Professor Shimada said: "The fact that we still don't know exactly how Megalodon looked keeps our imagination going."This is exactly why the science of paleontology continues to be an exciting academic field.