Please drop me a line and give me your e-mail and mailing address if you want to be notified when the book "MEGALODON: Hunting the Hunter" comes out
Meg ancestor Otodus obliquus model created by Cliff Jeremiah. Photo by Pat Jeremiah.
Hi.
For those of you who bought my first book, "Fossiling in Florida" (University Press of Florida, 1999), I want to thank you. The book has become a UPF best-seller, and has gone into its second printing.
I am now nearly finished with my second book. Writing in a conversational style for the lay person -- without forsaking science -- I embark on a world-wide hunt for the largest predatory fish and most fearsome shark ever to inhabit our global seas. After millions of yers, the fossil record for this 60-foot aqua-motive known as C. megalodon abruptly ends.
In part, this is a color-illustrated guide book that pinpoints where to search for Meg and her ancestors' teeth and vertebrae world-wide, as well as other shark fossils. It should also help identify the various species. Additionaly, the book is meant to entertain and invite lively discussions about how such a menacing predator became extinct, or whether it is still lurking deep below the surface. Finally, the book is a rallying cry for treating today's sharks (as well as all life forms) with as much respect as we ourselves would want to be treated.
Included in the book are interviews from some of the leading experts on prehistoric sharks. Many of the photos are from my private collection of fossil shark teeth, or those belonging to Gordon Hubbell, one of Discovery On-Line's panel of experts for their series on sharks, Cliff Jeremiah (whose life-size Meg jaws and other shark models grace different chapters), and Steve Alter, a world-class, Jacksonville, FL Meg tooth collector. (http://www.megalodonteeth.com).
Below are sample photos and text. If you like what you see and wish to purchase the book when it comes out, please send me an e-mail with both your e-mail address and mailing address (in case your e-mail address changes between now and the publication date). I'll notify you when it's published.
If you've got a favorite collecting location you want to share with others, it's not too late for it to be considered in the chapter on world-wide Meg sites. Again, send me an e-mail and I will let you know if it is something I can use. I need detailed directions and collecting tips, as well as quality photos of Meg teeth or vertebrae (or those of her ancestors) specific to the site, plus photos of the site itself.
Again, thank you!
Mark Renz
MEGALODON: Hunting the Hunter
Chapter 1. Evolution of a survivor (Brief history of large and unusual sharks)
Edestus models by Cliff Jeremiah. Top row is Edestus heinrishi. Bottom row is Edestus minor. Both reached about 10 feet (m) in length, while Edestus gianteus (not pictured) was over 20 feet (m) long with two single rows of teeth that cut like a pair of saws. It lived during the Pennsylvanian Period about 300 mya.. Photo by author.
EXCERPT: Fish number more than 24,000 species, making up more than half of the diversity of Earth's vertebrates. They are one of the tastiest foods known to humans, and fishing is one of our favorite sports. We eat and are entertained by the very ancestors from which we evolved - as if they played only a bit part in the evolution of our own species.
Fish are the first vertebrates, and have spent millions of years changing and adapting to their wet and dry surroundings as needed. As a result, some of them likely became amphibians and developed walking fins, then evolved into reptiles and finally mammals. Who knows where evolution may be leading we mammals that can walk upright and stop to ponder such humble beginnings?
Chapter 2. The Rise…(A 62 million year reign of Meg and her ancestors)
In a Sarasota County stream, thirty-five miles west of the meg pendant find, Marisa Renz was snorkeling in two feet of water and stumbled onto this five and a half inch adult Meg tooth. Left: lingual view. Right: Labial view. Photos by author.
EXCERPT: The last thing I had on my mind was a close encounter with a shark. I was snorkeling in a fresh-water stream in De Soto County, Florida, looking for more fossilized bones of a prehistoric giant ground sloth I had stumbled onto a week earlier. Close to half of its fossilized skeleton was present, including two claw cores, one of which was over 18 inches long. It was an impressive animal, even 100,000 years after its death.
EXCERPT: "Meg", as the shark is commonly called, may have reached an intimidating length of 60 feet, and dined on whales -- or whatever it felt like eating. It was the largest predatory fish ever to live and one of the most fearsome creatures to share our planet. Its weight may have exceeded 100,000 pounds, or the equivalent of more than 400 professional football linebackers at 250 pounds each.
EXCERPT: I wondered what Native Americans must have thought of Meg, especially when they would encounter massive teeth in excess of six inches in a fresh-water creek or river. It must have puzzled them how a shark so large could make it into the shallow creeks in the first place. Or did they realize their world must have changed drastically since the shark lost its teeth?
Chapter 3. The Fall… (What went wrong? How did Meg become extinct?)
A six-inch modern C. megalodon tooth? (From private collection of Gordon Hubbell). Photo by author.
EXCERPT: As the monstrous shark passed through, the men said the water "boiled, over a large space." These were veteran seamen not easily brought to fear, yet Stead suggested they acted like small children who were afraid of being left alone in the dark. What had they seen? Was it a huge megalodon shark? Were these giant beasts still living as recently as the early 1900s?
EXCERPT: "If there was such a creature alive, "says shark researcher Gordon Hubbell, "we would find evidence of it. We would find some kind of a carcass washed up on shore with bite marks on it, or we would see it on radar screens, or we would see something that would tell us there is something big living down there."
EXCERPT: Novelist Steve Alten (MEG, Doubleday, 1997), thinks the experts, not Meg, are dead—as in dead wrong. "The only thing we have that proves these sharks existed is their fossilized teeth," Says Alten. "Everything else about them is pure speculation, including the most important question: Could meg still be alive?"
Chapter 4. Hunting the Hunter (Where did meg live? Where can you find the shark's remains today?)
Left: Meg teeth recovered from a Florida phosphate mine, and now in the private collection of Gordon Hubbell. Right: Meg vertebra plucked from a South Carolina river and now in the private collection of Jeff McManus. Photos by author.
EXCERPT: Hunting one of the most ferocious beasts ever to inhabit earth's oceans is not for the timid or inexperienced. Then again, perhaps it is. For the chief qualifications of a successful hunt are not bravery, valor, or top marksmanship. Megalodon hunters don't kill, they resurrect. And the best way to resurrect a 60-foot shark is through a little research, a little skill, and a lot of luck.
Chapter 5. A Dentist's Nightmare (Meg dentition)
The tip of a Meg tooth under a macro lens. Photo by Dave Ward.
EXCERPT: Do sharks prefer serrated teeth over non-serrated teeth? If you were to ask Meg, the answer is probably yes. Acquiring serrations is a far easier task than acquiring legs. When Meg's ancestor, Otodus obliquus, first began to evolve, its teeth were sharp and straight-edged. By the time, Meg reached her peak, the shark had developed fine serrations. Apparently, the manufacturer's of steak knives have learned what Meg eventually discovered -- that serrated edges cut better and retain their sharpness longer than non-serrated edges.
Chapter 6. Beauty and the Beast (Photo galleries for identification of meg, her ancestors, cousins and underwater neighbors)
The largest Meg tooth in the world? Find out how big it really is. (Found by Vito Bertucci, and now part of private collection of Gordon Hubbell). Photo by author.
Other shark and non-shark fossils that show up while looking for Meg. Fossils are from private collection of Steve Alter, Jeff McManus and author. Photos by author.
EXCERPT: Mysteries intrigue us, and the mystery behind the life and times of a 60-foot monster that regularly dined on huge whales, stretches both our imagination and our sense of reality. This was a real monster, not a ficticious creature born in the mind of some Hollywood movie producer. It's teeth were not just a tool to secure a meal, but a true work of art -- then and now.
Chapter 7. Patho Megs (Abnormalities in the fossil record)
Meg tooth with deformed serrations, indicating true pathology. South Carolina River find. From the private collection of Jeff McManus. Photo by author.
EXCERPT: "True pathologies will usually show some signs of healing or infection," says Sinibaldi. "In Megs, this damage would have likely occurred to the jaw, or when the tooth had not yet fully moved to the feeding position from farther back in the file."
Chapter 8. Meg Attack! (Fossil bones with meg bite marks)
A 9-inch long section of whale rib whith shark bite marks -- most likely from a C. megalodon shark. Photo and fossil by Dave Ward.
EXCERPT: But imagine living the life of a mother sperm whale in the warm waters of the early Miocene, some 18 mya. At 50 to 60 feet long, you would be the same size as the megalodons that stalk you and your young, but even with large, pointy teeth and huge jaws, you're no match for those awesome, 10-foot wide jaws (outside measurements) with trangular, saw-blade teeth in excess of seven inches. You get some relief by traveling in a pod, but you're always on alert, never knowing from which direction your attacker will approach.
Chapter 9. Measuring Up: Was Meg the baddest of them all? (Compared to other predators, marine and terrestrial)
Life-size model of an ancient sawfish known as pristis sp., created by Cliff Jeremiah. Photo by author.
EXCERPT: ...So for the purpose of this chapter, a select few beasts were chosen for comparison. Each was rated on a "Terror Index", according to the following simple criteria. If they were all placed on an even playing field, who would be the fiercest? The index is from 1-10, with 10 being the baddest of the bad.
Here's the line-up:
1. C. megalodon (the largest predatory fish of all time)
2. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus (Cretaceous croc-like dinosaur)
3. Tyrannosaurus rex (one bad dino)
4. Giganotosaurus and Charcharodontosaurus (T-Rex-like challengers)
5. Dienosuchus (mega-crocodile)
6. Rhamposuchus (mega-crocodile)
7. Pliosaurs (large, vicious aquatic reptiles)
a. Kronosaurus (Pliosaur)
b. Liopleurodon (Pliosaur)
EXCERPT: One day at the age of 15, while I was fighting a mud fish I had just hooked, something clicked inside my head. I realized for the first time that the fish I was fighting wasn't having nearly as good a time as I was. I am greatly enjoying this, I thought, while he is struggling for his very life. I didn't quit fishing immediately, but after that realization, I gradually lost interest in the sport of fishing. There just seemed to be something fundamentally wrong when a creature like myself, capable of respect and compassion, could find entertainment in forcing pain and suffering onto another innocent creature.
Still, I loved to eat fish, and thought nothing of sinking my teeth into a finely cooked fillet of Cajun-style catfish, deep-sea grouper or other fish straight from the grocery store ice bins. I didn't like the notion of fish suffering on my account even for food, but logic told me that those fish were going to have to die if I was going to continue living.
EXCERPT: Today, an estimated 100 million sharks are being killed per year. Although shark meat is eaten, it is expensive and difficult to preserve, so the fins are usually removed and the shark is thrown back – to either bleed to death or drown.
Books, Museums, Professional Contacts, Web Sites and Fossil Clubs related to Meg
Terms
Bibliography
Afterword
Please drop me a line if you want to be notified when the book comes out