MEGALODON (Otodus megalodon)

No predator in the fossil record captures the imagination quite like Otodus megalodon. Estimated to have reached lengths of up to sixty feet, with a bite force strong enough to crush the skeleton of a whale, megalodon dominated the world’s oceans for more than fifteen million years, from the early Miocene until its extinction roughly three and a half million years ago. And yet almost everything known about this animal comes from teeth and vertebrae alone, since a cartilaginous skeleton rarely…