ROMAN UCHYTEL/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Ancient megalodon sharks may have been at least 2 metres long at birth – and they might have grown so large by eating unhatched eggs in the uterus.
Kenshu Shimada at DePaul University in Chicago and his colleagues examined an
Otodus
megalodon fossil that was recovered in the 1860s from 15-million-year-old rock and is now housed at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Studying the shark’s vertebrae, allowed them to estimate its body size at various stages in its life.
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“Megalodon’s size at birth was about 2 metres in total, which indicates that it must have given live birth like all present-day lamniform sharks do,” says Shimada.