Big Meg
The Story of the Largest and Most Mysterious Predator that Ever Lived
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Internationally bestselling author and renowned scientist Tim Flannery and his daughter, scientist Emma Flannery, delivers an informative-yet-intimate portrait of the megalodon, an extinct shark and the largest predator of all time
When Tim Flannery was a boy he found a fossilized tooth of the giant shark megalodon at a beach near his home in Australia. This remarkable find—the tooth was large enough to cover his palm—sparked an interest in paleontology that was to inform his life’s work and a lifelong quest to uncover the secrets of the great shark Otodus megalodon.
Tim passed on his love of the natural world and interest in the fossil record to his daughter, Emma, a scientist and writer. And now, together, they have written a fascinating account of this ancient marine creature.
Big Meg charts the evolution of megalodon, its super-predator status for about fifteen million years and its decline and extinction. It delves into the fossil record to answer questions about its behavior and role in shaping marine ecosystems as well as its impact on the human psyche. It contains stories of the scientist and amateur fossil hunters who have scoured the seas, and land, for fossil remains, drawn to the beauty and mystique of the great shark, sometimes meeting their death in the process.
Deemed “in the league of the all-time great explorers” by David Attenborough, Tim Flannery has come together with Emma Flannery to spin a story of the great natural history of our planet as enthralling as the fossil record itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Paleontologist Tim Flannery (The Eternal Frontier) teams up with his scientist daughter Emma (Weirdest Creatures in Time) for this intermittently stimulating examination of the megalodon, an extinct shark species that lived from 20 to five million years ago. Admitting that the megalodon "remains largely a mystery," with the only known remnants consisting of "fossilised teeth and a few vertebrae," the authors gamely cover what scientists have speculated on the basis of this evidence. Because megalodon teeth are usually found "as isolated specimens," it's believed the megalodon, like most sharks, produced and lost teeth continuously, with each individual "capable of producing tens of thousands of teeth over its century-long life." A study of growth bands in a megalodon vertebra found in Belgium suggested the animal was more than two meters long when it was born. Among extant sharks, the authors observe, such "large pups are indicative of both live birth and an unsavoury behaviour known as intrauterine cannibalism." The impressive science highlights how much researchers have been able to learn from a limited fossil record. Unfortunately, there's still a fair bit of filler about contemporary shark attacks on humans, the decimation of shark populations due to overfishing, and the evolution of sharks generally. Still, this is worth diving into.
