by Michael Totten

Created on: July 08, 2008

Long thought to be only a matter of fossil record, extinct for over 60 million years, the coelacanth shocked scientists around the world when it was caught by professional fishermen off the coast of Madagascar. On the other side of the world, a very determined team of cryptozoologists patiently tracked down local legends of a giant fish, until they finally landed a megamouth shark near Oahu, Hawai'i.

Could another living fossil be lurking somewhere in the oceans of the world? Absolutely it could. We know less about the depths of our oceans than we do about the heights of the Himalayas.

Could that living fossil be the largest shark which has ever swum the oceans of this world?

The existing fossil record shows Carcharodon megalodon to have been a massive shark which dominated the oceans some 20 million years ago to possibly as recently as 500,000 years ago. Dating estimates of as recently as 15,000 years ago on some fossilized teeth are now believed to be inaccurate, based on complicating interactions between ocean encrustation and the fossilization itself. (By comparison, the earliest stone tools are believed to have been created roughly 25,000 years ago.) Original guesstimates based on that minimal fossil record estimated it could grow as large as 100 feet long, five times as large as a great white shark. Later, more sober revisions still describe an animal whose jaw can open six feet across, with seven-inch-long teeth, more than twice the size of a great white shark's. This makes it the second largest predator the earth has ever seen, second only to today's sperm whale.

Huge shark sightings are not common, but they are also far from rare. Most such sightings are probably those of basking or great white sharks, or possibly of whale sharks. Size is a very difficult thing to estimate when in the water and facing the likelihood of becoming prey. There are no markers against which to measure, other than a fair certainty that the creature is clearly much bigger than the person who saw it.

Thus until such a creature is captured, whether in a net or reliably on film, we can't prove whether or not it still exists. We can, however, determine whether it is possible for such a creature to have survived. Basically, there has to be adequate food and a consistent temperature and pH.

We can guess that adequate prey exists in the oceans, even for a creature such as this, as demonstrated by the continual survival of the sperm whale. However, it is possible that over the years, the

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