Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Remarkable Creatures - The Evolution of the Great White Shark - NYTimes.com

Remarkable Creatures - The Evolution of the Great White Shark - NYTimes.com

That is how a shark expert, Matt Hooper, described Carcharodon megalodon to the police chief in Peter Benchley's novel "Jaws" He was referring to the 50-foot-long, 50-ton body and enormous six- to seven-inch-long teeth that made the extinct megalodon shark perhaps the most awesome predator that has ever roamed the seas.

Hooper had just gotten his first glimpse of the massive great white shark that was terrorizing the residents of Amity Island. Hooper explained that the Latin name for the great white was Carcharodon carcharias and that 's the closest ancestor we can find for it was megalodon. So maybe, he speculated, this creature wasn't merely a great white, but a surviving sea monster from an earlier era.

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