Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

I got this thing a while back. I’d always wanted one, and it really does spark joy.

First up: what should we call this critter? AFAIK, the species name has never been in doubt, it’s always been [Somegenus] megalodon. That genus has variously been argued to be Carcharodon (same as the extant great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias), Carcharocles, Otodus, Megaselachus, and probably others. From my limited reading, the current consensus seems to be converging on Otodus, for reasons that seem reasonable to me, but I’m hardly an expert on this problem. It’s not that I think it’s unimportant, more that the generic identity of [Somegenus] megalodon has been historically labile, and as a non-expert I hesitate to come down firmly behind any of the hypotheses. If it’s still Otodus megalodon in another decade, I might take a stand. If you want to do a deep dive on this, check out Kent (2018: 80-85). In the meantime, I’m going to refer to it informally as ‘megalodon’, without italics. Although the actual genus name Megalodon was tragically wasted a fossil clam (true story), I’m confident that no-one, scientist or layperson, will misunderstand when I refer to the humongous extinct megatoothed shark as megalodon.

With that out of the way: wow, that’s a big freakin’ tooth! Here it is again with a scale bar.

The serrations on the sides are very cool. The edges are worn a bit in places, and that plus the visible notch on one side of the tooth (upper left in the photo above) suggests that this tooth was used, as opposed to being a replacement tooth that rotted out of the jaw before it ever had a chance to be deployed. Where ‘used’ means ‘used to punch and then tear immense holes in other animals’. Pretty wild to think about ancient whales dying on this very tooth.

I use this thing at outreach events, and I got a cast tooth of a modern great white shark for comparison. Those great white teeth are 10 bucks at Bone Clones, so I got a bunch of them and gave them to nieces and nephews as stocking stuffers.

Here’s a labeled version. From what I’ve been able to determine (i.e., shark people, please correct me if I’m wrong!), most shark teeth ‘lean’ away from the body midline. Upper teeth of megalodon tend to be very wide, with wide, shallow angles at the base, whereas lower teeth are more dagger-shaped and have a more pronounced basal angle. I’m pretty sure this meg tooth is a lower, and we’re looking at the lingual (tongue) side in this photo (more on that in a bit), so the tooth is facing the same way we are. I think that makes it a left lower tooth. The great white tooth is a probably a left upper, although great whites apparently have one tooth position that leans mesially instead of distally, so I could have that one wrong-sided. The ‘bourlette’ is an area of exposed orthodentine between the root and the enamel that covers the tooth crown (Kent 2018: 86). This tooth is not in perfect shape, there’s been some peeling of the enamel just above the bourlette. 

I think this photo makes the size-comparison point even more clearly.

Worth noting: if the hypothesis that megalodon belongs in Otodus is correct, the similarities between megalodon and the great white shark are convergent; megalodon teeth are Otodus teeth that lost their side-cusps, and great white teeth are basically wider, serrated mako teeth. That level of convergence shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has seen a thylacine skull. Still, this photo makes it very obvious why Louis Agassiz assigned megalodon to Carcharodon, the great white shark genus, when he named the species back in 1843: the two look a lot alike. (Also: Agassiz didn’t have all the transitional fossils that we do now.)

Boomerang thought, added in post: at least, megalodon teeth look a lot like the upper teeth of great whites. The lower teeth of great whites are much narrower and more mako-esque. 

A couple of features worth noting here. The mesial margin has a little wrinkle, which cannot be damage because the serrations follow the in-folded contour. This seems to be a minor developmental anomaly that is pretty common in megalodon teeth. The distal margin has a distinct notch, also mentioned above, which probably represents feeding damage sustained in life.

Arguably this side-view is even more striking; the megalodon tooth is 2.38 times the length of the great white tooth (155mm vs 65mm on the long side), but more than three times as thick (29mm vs 9mm max thickness), and the blade of the tooth stays proportionally thicker over more of its length. This tooth was built to do some work.

Am I fanboying here? Sure, a little (and not for the first time). Giant extinct monsters are exciting, and I’m happy to celebrate that while also wanting to know more about how they lived.

The thing that surprised me the most while reading up on shark teeth is how they are oriented in the jaws. I’d always assumed that the convex faces (toward the bottom of the above photo) faced outward (labial or lip-facing), and the flat faces (toward the top of the above photo) faced inward (lingual or tongue-facing), but it’s actually opposite. In the photo above, the labial or outward faces are up, and the lingual or inward faces are down. I’m sure this is old hat to shark people, but it hurts my head. Most teeth I know of have their convex faces outward, like human incisors and tyrannosaur premaxillary teeth. Plus, instinctively it seems like predator teeth should curve toward the back of the mouth, but with their flat labial faces and convex lingual faces, most shark teeth seem to curve toward the front (I realize that they may have been placed in the jaws so that they still pointed backwards overall). I was so surprised by this that I did a lot of checking before bringing it up in this post, but it’s clear even in really good photos of live great white sharks with their mouths open. There’s no bigger story here, just me confronting my own misapprehension about animal morphology. Still seems weird.

If you want to know more about how megalodon lived, I’ve included links below to some papers on its size (Shimada 2019, Shimada et al. 2020, Cooper et al. 2020, 2022, Perez et al. 2021), breeding habits and life history (Miller et al. 2018, Shimada et al. 2021, 2022), evolution (Shimada et al. 2016, Kent 2018, Perez et al. 2018), and paleobiology (Maisch et al. 2019, Ballell and Ferron 2021, Miller et al. 2022, Sternes et al. 2022). This is a highly idiosyncratic collection based on like one evening of messing around on Google Scholar. I’m sure I missed tons of important work, so feel free to recommend more refs in the comments.

Oh, like virtually everything else on this site, these photos are freely available under the CC-BY license, so if you want to use them, modify them, etc., go nuts.

References

• Ballell, A. and Ferrón, H.G. 2021. Biomechanical insights into the dentition of megatooth sharks (Lamniformes: Otodontidae). Scientific Reports 11(1): 1-9.
• Cooper, J.A., Pimiento, C., Ferrón, H.G. and Benton, M.J. 2020. Body dimensions of the extinct giant shark Otodus megalodon: a 2D reconstruction. Scientific Reports 10(1): 1-9.
• Cooper, J.A., Hutchinson, J.R., Bernvi, D.C., Cliff, G., Wilson, R.P., Dicken, M.L., Menzel, J., Wroe, S., Pirlo, J. and Pimiento, C. 2022. The extinct shark Otodus megalodon was a transoceanic superpredator: Inferences from 3D modeling. Science Advances 8(33): p.eabm9424.
• Kent, B.W. 2018. The cartilaginous fishes (chimaeras, sharks, and rays) of Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, USA. The Geology and Vertebrate Paleontology of Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, USA. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 100: 45-157.
• Maisch IV, H.M., Becker, M.A. and Chamberlain Jr, J.A. 2020. Macroborings in Otodus megalodon and Otodus chubutensis shark teeth from the submerged shelf of Onslow Bay, North Carolina, USA: implications for processes of lag deposit formation. Ichnos 27(2): 122-141.
• Miller, A., Gibson, M. and Boessenecker, R. 2021. A megatoothed shark (Carcharocles angustidens) nursery in the Oligocene Charleston Embayment, South Carolina, USA. Palaeontologia Electronica 24(2): 1-19.
• Miller, H.S., Avrahami, H.M. and Zanno, L.E. 2022. Dental pathologies in lamniform and carcharhiniform sharks with comments on the classification and homology of double tooth pathologies in vertebrates. PeerJ 10: e12775.
• Perez, V.J., Godfrey, S.J., Kent, B.W., Weems, R.E. and Nance, J.R. 2018. The transition between Carcharocles chubutensis and Carcharocles megalodon (Otodontidae, Chondrichthyes): lateral cusplet loss through time. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 38(6): e1546732.
• Perez, V.J., Leder, R.M. and Badaut, T. 2021. Body length estimation of Neogene macrophagous lamniform sharks (Carcharodon and Otodus) derived from associated fossil dentitions. Palaeontologica Electronica 24(1): a09.
• Shimada, K. 2019. The size of the megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon (Lamniformes: Otodontidae), revisited. Historical Biology 33(7): 904-911.
• Shimada, K., Chandler, R.E., Lam, O.L.T., Tanaka, T. and Ward, D.J. 2016. A new elusive otodontid shark (Lamniformes: Otodontidae) from the lower Miocene, and comments on the taxonomy of otodontid genera, including the ‘megatoothed’clade. Historical Biology 29(5): 704-714.
• Shimada, K., Becker, M.A. and Griffiths, M.L. 2020. Body, jaw, and dentition lengths of macrophagous lamniform sharks, and body size evolution in Lamniformes with special reference to ‘off-the-scale’gigantism of the megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon. Historical Biology 33(11): 2543-2559.
• Shimada, K., Bonnan, M.F., Becker, M.A. and Griffiths, M.L. 2021. Ontogenetic growth pattern of the extinct megatooth shark Otodus megalodon—implications for its reproductive biology, development, and life expectancy. Historical Biology 33(12): 3254-3259.
• Shimada, K., Maisch IV, H.M., Perez, V.J., Becker, M.A. and Griffiths, M.L. 2022. Revisiting body size trends and nursery areas of the Neogene megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon (Lamniformes: Otodontidae), reveals Bergmann’s rule possibly enhanced its gigantism in cooler waters. Historical Biology: 1-10.
• Sternes, P.C., Wood, J.J. and Shimada, K., 2022. Body forms of extant lamniform sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes), and comments on the morphology of the extinct megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon, and the evolution of lamniform thermophysiology. Historical Biology 1-13.