How did Megalodon sharks go extinct?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Megalodon was the biggest shark species that ever lived. The biggest ones were almost 60 feet long, which is longer than a school bus! These gigantic sharks went extinct millions of years ago, but why? We asked paleontologist Kallie Moore to help us find the answer.

Got a question that you megalo-don’t know how to answer? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll hunt down an expert to explain!

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the brains behind brains on, this is The Moment of Um.
0:06.9	Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um.
0:09.2	Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Chum McSharkerson, The Tiger Shark.
0:17.6	Um.
0:19.7	Um. Tiger Shark. Um... I'm working on some homework for shark school.
0:27.6	Check it out.
0:28.6	We're supposed to pick a famous shark species that we admire and dress up like them.
0:33.6	I obviously picked Megalodon, aka the most epic shark that ever lived. These prehistoric sharks
0:44.1	lived a long time ago, and they weren't just big. They were really, really big. They could grow
0:52.8	almost 60 feet long, which is longer than a school bus.
0:57.0	Plus, they had huge teeth, about as long as a dollar bill.
1:03.0	So, epic!
1:05.0	Megalodon went extinct more than 3 million years ago, but I've always wondered why.
1:14.3	My human buddy Sienna was asking about this, too.
1:19.0	Let's ask someone who knows a lot about ancient sharks. Okay. Unfortunately or fortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it, megaladon is definitely
1:41.7	definitely extinct.
1:43.5	My name is Callie Moore. I manage the fossil collection at the
1:47.7	University of Montana in Missoula. So Megalodon was one of the largest predatory sharks that
1:54.4	has ever lived. It may have been upwards of 50 feet long, so that's like the width of a basketball court. How do we know that
2:04.1	Megalodon is definitely extinct? Well, we've got really good fossil records from the time that
2:10.0	Megalodon lived in between 23 and about 3.5 million years ago, and we find these very complete outcrops of rock that show
2:19.8	Megalodon teeth up to a certain point, and then after that certain point, you don't find
	...

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