Great White Shark Gallery

Megalodon shark and great white

Megalodon shark (Carcharodon megalodon), computer artwork. A great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) is shown below it at the same scale. This enormous shark lived between around 20 and 1.2 million years ago, and is known from fossils. It was related to the modern great white shark, and is thought to have fed on whales, as this is the only source of food that could have provided it with enough meat. Megalodon was thought to attain lengths exceeding 20 metres, and possibly significantly larger. It is thought that it died out after the seas cooled, allowing warm-blooded whales to escape the sharks for much of the year by swimming to waters too cold for them to survive in

© CHRISTIAN DARKIN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Rhodian Dutchman's pipe, Aristolochia guichardii, in flower in quantity in old vineyard, Rhodes, G

Great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, triangular dorsal fin at surface. Following swimmer. Increasingly, people and sharks come into contact as humans spend their leisure time in the seas and oceans. Many people fear sharks and particularly being attacked/bitten by one, but it is important to remember that these incidents are rare. Indeed, in 2017, the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), housed at the University of Florida, received reports of 88 confirmed unprovoked attacks worldwide, five of which (~6%) were tragically fatal; but this must be viewed in the light of the billions of people entering the water every year. Overall, surfers and swimmers account for about 80% of shark attack victims and, while the number of attacks has increased (possibly a reflection of an increasing human population), for the past few decades, the fatality rate has been falling through a combination of better education and advances in medical care. Mistaken identity is frequently cited by the media to explain shark attacks on humans. It is now considered far more probable, however, that such human-shark interactions are the result of a shark's curiosity. USA Pacific Ocean Coast

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Tertiary fossils, wood engravings published in 1878

Tertiary fossils: Crassatella ponderosa, Cancer macrocheilus, Nummulites nummularia (cross section, side view, top view), Limnaeus pyramidalis, Rhombus minimus, Cerithrum hexagonum, Notidanus primigenius, Planorbis discus, Turbinolia sulcata, Myliobatus punctatus, Carcharodon heterodon. Wood engraving, published in 1878

© ZU_09