Megalodon Teeth

[siteseer]

It's not a non sequitir since a "Sasquatch," in the sense of the word I was using, is something masquerading as the real thing just as the claimed 7 1/2"-inchers or larger are artificially-augmented or nonexistent. It would be great to see an 8-inch tooth but it appears it can only be constructed from a mix of the natural and the man-made.

Perhaps the best evidence against the 8-incher beyond the super-rarity of 7-inchers is the lack of partial teeth that would be large enough to reach eight inches had they been complete. Divers and land collectors find thousands (millions?) more incomplete teeth than complete ones. I've never heard of a half-tooth or two-thirds-tooth that would measure up to that. You can ask people who've dug for fun or profit for decades and no one else has either. It would be interesting to see if anyone on the forum has a candidate.

I believe the 7-inch teeth that have been confirmed belonged to the few giants of the species.

Jess

the sasquatch analogy is a non sequitur,

[THobern]

The 7 5/8" tooth was, to quote myself, "putty and optimism". The analogy that was being drawn between teeth and drugs trials - and I think this is a valid one - is that a low sample of a population can still provide statistical significance.

[meg123]

From what I have heard about that 7 5/8" tooth is that there was about a inch of added length from when it was found broken. And that it would have been that it would have most likely been that length if found full.

[aurora]

id think so. most people are 5.9 to 6 feet tall, but there is always the rare 7 or 7 and a half foot dude

[Auspex]

id think so. most people are 5.9 to 6 feet tall, but there is always the rare 7 or 7 and a half foot dude

Would they have survived without society? Wild sharks don't have a support group.

Also, how much bigger are these individuals teeth? Often, their height is caused by long bones that just keep growing.

[THobern]

Would they have survived without society? Wild sharks don't have a support group.

Also, how much bigger are these individuals teeth? Often, their height is caused by long bones that just keep growing.

I think he's making a statistical point. Pathology - not necessarily thyroid giganism - will allow individual specimens to fall outside a gaussian distribution.

[Guest BOHUNTER]

Im gonna find it!

Imagine if the land masses were removed 50 feet on each side of the rivers... Holy smokes the fossils that would be exposed! Like new beginnings... Everyone would find 7 inchers! LOL Who knows it may be 1/4 of an inch below you last fan.... I think they are goodies everywhere still, those on limestone serfaces can be cleaned out but in clay or sand.. always eroding out... and hey the best pickers miss teeth! So...

I lose my phone in my house and cant find it.... bare bottom river bed camoflauged with sediment and your view point, the surrounding distractions, if we could get them all no one would go back now.

Im gonna find the 8 incher one day, and Im gonna find me a 10 inch Entelodont tusk, and a 4 inch Ric tooth!

Then Ill probably try the lottery..... LOL ........BANG.... Dang lightning like to have got me.. I gotta get off this computer!

[tracer]

i have seen a reference to a tooth in a very respected collector's collection that is substantially over 7". but forgetting for a moment the 8" magical number, nobody who's saying that isn't possible has answered the question of what IS possible then? if you're throwing in assertions that the number of megs found is sufficient to predict both the largest normal size and the standard deviation, and that statistics don't lie, then what's the max size out there?

[Mexx]

...if you're throwing in assertions that the number of megs found is sufficient to predict both the largest normal size and the standard deviation, and that statistics don't lie, then what's the max size out there?

I never said statistics can predict the exact size of the largest tooth out there. It just gives you the probability of finding a tooth of a certain size in terms of standard deviations from the mean. There is no exact threshold, the probability to reach it just gets infinitesimally small with increasing size....and there are the outliers, in this case pathologic megs that do not follow the gaussian distribution anymore and are therefore even harder to predict. There is a nice example with Robert Wadlow in this thread. He is taller than anyone would predict if he took into account the gaussian distribution which shows size ranges for healthy people. But again, Mr. Wadlow had a pathologic phenotype, he was no "normal" human being and therefore an outlier.

Again, statistics are about probabilities, not about known facts or in this case definite sizes. But it is the closest we can get to the truth if we don't know anything for sure and don't want to make unsustainable assumptions. Statistics is no definite solution to any problem, but do you know anything better?

I really did not want to upset people here, I was just throwing in the statistical point of view as a means to consider what is possible and what is very very unlikely.

[tracer]

[Guest bigchaka]

I was thinking a lot about there being any possibilities that there would be a 8 inch megalodon tooth out there and i wanted to know peoples thoughts about this topic?

i personally think its possible for there to be 8 inch teeth but no bigger than that. i have done extensive research on meg teeth and the largest one i have heard of is 8.17 inches but it was hard for me to believe it was real at first.

[Auspex]

i personally think its possible for there to be 8 inch teeth but no bigger than that. i have done extensive research on meg teeth and the largest one i have heard of is 8.17 inches but it was hard for me to believe it was real at first.

Who, What, When, Where...supporting details please

If this can be verified, it will change the direction of this topic!

[bmorefossil]

i would love to know the source of your information

[siteseer]

I was thinking about this while on the road last week. Another thing to consider as we dream of the 8-inch tooth is that megalodon apparently reached its largest size in the Late Miocene to Early Pliocene. Rare finds of Late Pliocene megalodon are often disputed and considered reworked. In Middle Miocene rocks a 6-inch tooth is freakishly large (ask a Calvert or STH collector) and even in some Late Miocene deposits (ask a Bone Valley collector). So, in actuality, the potential rock volume that could still hold a 7 1/2-incher is probably more limited than we've allowed. An 8-inch tooth from a deposit very rarely yielding a 6-inch tooth and no known 7-inchers becomes an even more remote possibility than one from areas known for a very small number of mega-megalodons.

With the teeth that come out of rivers (or pop out of phosphate processing operations) cutting through several potential formations, it's near-impossible (and probably expensive) to determine their age. An in situ find from well-dated rocks like the Black Hills' specimen give us a valuable reference point.

[Nandomas]

here the proof from Elasmo ;)

[tipsycat]

The paleontologists usually doubt the statistical likelihood that an 8 inch megalodon tooth could exist because we have already found such a large sample size of megalodon teeth from all over the earth and such a tiny percentage of those teeth exceed seven inches in diagonal overall length. If this sample set of teeth were distributed into a bell shaped distribution curve then teeth exceeding seven inches would be many, many standard deviations from the norm. Thus, they fairly say that an 8 inch tooth is statistically nearly impossible except as a rare mutant form suffering from acromegaly or gigantism perhaps?

 

However, what they have failed to recognize is the possibility that our entire sample size of fossil megalodon teeth is primarily derived from relatively shallow and near-shore environments. Perhaps extremely large sharks or even a subspecies of sharks could have adapted to a deeper water environment where larger size could have provided some adaptive evolutionary benefit. Therefore, despite our robust statistical model we could still have an incomplete knowledge of a maximum size range for this and other similar fossil species.  What percentage of our total megalodon tooth sample size is derived from deep or extremely deep oceanic environments? We have already seen some evidence of this from Peru with nearly 7.5 inch specimens. 

 

Another point worth mentioning is that we may have effectively already found evidence of a megalodon shark which had 8 inch teeth. If we take the 7.48 inch specimen from Peru and its deep water oceanic paleo-environment as an example, then what degree of tooth size variation exists within the dentition of a single shark? If it is 5 percent or 8 percent then we multiply that by 7.48 inches what would be the result? At five percent variation, I calculated approximately  7.85 inches total diagonal length. At eight percent variation it was 8.07 inches. So then shark experts what exactly is that percent variation?

 

My point in posing these hypothetical questions was not to question the excellent science being accomplished by our paleontologists but rather to question complacency in too readily believing that we have derived a complete knowledge of any scientific topic which often is later found to be only partial. Remember Galileo.