How we know
Five levels between a bone and a myth.
Almost nothing about an extinct animal is a flat “fact” or a flat “guess.” It sits somewhere on a spectrum — from bone you can hold to a myth a movie invented.
01
Direct Fossil Evidence
Preserved in the rock and measured directly — bones, teeth, tracks, gut contents.
Megalodon's teeth exceeded 17 cm in slant height. The teeth are abundant, and they can be measured in any museum case.
02
Strong Inference
Not preserved, but strongly reasoned from anatomy, living relatives, and physics.
Megalodon was partly warm-blooded. Nothing about its metabolism fossilised, but isotopes locked in the teeth record a body warmer than the water around it.
03
Debated
Genuinely contested — credible scientists read the same fossils different ways.
Whether Spinosaurus pursued prey underwater or fished from the shallows. The same bones support both readings, and the argument is live.
04
Speculative Reconstruction
Plausible and useful for storytelling, but the evidence can't confirm it yet.
Megalodon hunting in coordinated packs. Behaviour almost never fossilises, so this is a story the evidence permits rather than one it supports.
05
Pop Culture Myth
Widely believed because of films and media — but the science says otherwise.
Megalodon surviving in the deep ocean. A film invention. It disappears from the fossil record around 3.6 million years ago and does not come back.
Why a scale and not a bibliography
A citation answers who says so. This scale answers how do we know, which is the question that actually changes what you should believe. A paper attached to a claim about behaviour does not make the behaviour preserved — behaviour almost never fossilises, and saying so is more useful than a reference.
Sources still matter, and specific findings still get cited. But a claim gets published here with the reasoning that supports it, not with a reference nobody has opened.
The scale is being applied to the archive one documentary at a time. No page carries it yet. All 83 documentaries