Megalodon Facts for Kids
MEG-uh-luh-don · its name means “big tooth”
🦈 Not a dinosaur: a shark that lived long after them, and is extinct
The biggest shark that ever lived. It is extinct: gone for good.
Megalodon was a giant shark. It lived long, long ago, after the dinosaurs. It is gone now. We find its big teeth.
Megalodon was the biggest shark that ever lived, and the biggest fish too. It is extinct, which means there are none left anywhere, not even deep in the sea. A shark's skeleton is soft cartilage, not bone, so it hardly ever turns to stone. What we find are its teeth, and some are as big as a grown-up's hand.
Megalodon swam in warm seas long after the giant dinosaurs were gone, and it died out a very long time before the first people. Scientists work out how big it was from its teeth, by comparing them with the teeth of a great white shark, a distant cousin. Their answers differ, so this page gives a range, not one number. You may hear that megalodon still hides in the deep ocean, but no living one has ever been seen and no fresh tooth has ever been found: it is gone for good.
Every dinosaur number is scientists’ best guess from bones, so each one says where it came from.
How big was Megalodon?
Megalodon in numbers
| Wingspan | 49 to 59 ft15 to 18 m12scientists' estimates from fossil teeth: one Park Service page says about 15 m, another about 18 m |
|---|---|
| Height at the hips | no checked number yet |
| Weight | no checked number yet |
| When it lived | no checked number yet |
| What it ate | big fish, seals and whales |
| Fossils found in | warm seas all over the world; its fossil teeth turn up in North Carolina, Georgia and Maryland, and on the deep floor of the Pacific Ocean |
| What kind | a shark: a fish, from long after the dinosaurs, and not a dinosaur |
Wow!
- Its name means big tooth.
- Megalodon teeth are the state fossil of North Carolina.
- A shark grows new teeth all its life, which is why so many megalodon teeth are found.
Books about Megalodon, free at the library
Ask a grown-up to tap the button: it shows where to borrow a book about Megalodon for free.
Where was the land back then?
The continents were in different places when Megalodon lived, in the Cenozoic. Open Planet Earth, pick Drifting continents, and slide back in time to see where the land was.
Its neighbours in time
Where these numbers come from
- National Park Service, National Fossil Day art contest 2023 (the Permian), checked 31 October 2026.
- National Park Service, fossil sharks of the Grand Canyon, checked 31 October 2026.
- Wikidata, Megalodon (Q163873), checked 30 October 2026.
To read more: the Natural History Museum’s Dino Directory (see also, not copied).