Of all the jaws to have evolved in their roughly 440 million year old history, few were as formidable as those of the enormous Carcharocles megalodon. The shark’s razor-toothed maw is what has made the extinct fish a regular star of pulp novels, b horror movies, and even basic cable hoaxes. Science backs up the shark’s reputation. In 2008, based on estimates from the study of a great white shark’s biting abilities, biomechanics expert Stephen Wroe and colleagues calculated that C. megalodon really did have a terrible bite – a crushing chomp between 24,000 and 41,000 pounds, depending on the position of prey in the 50-foot shark’s mouth.

But since C. megalodon forever disappeared from