Great white shark is about 3.3× longer by these reference values.
Great white shark uses a 6 m upper reference, compared with 1.8 m for Cladoselache. A clean mass ratio is not shown because at least one weight is not reliably reconstructed.
ON THE SAME SCALE
Human. Bus. Whale.
Pick your reference.
Length bars use upper comparison values and do not show body depth, tail proportion or typical adult size. A long thresher tail, for example, does not equal whale-shark body mass.
THE NUMBERS
Side by side.
WHAT SETS THEM APART
More than a size contest.
Length and weight
Cladoselache is represented by about 1.8 m / 6 ft; Great white shark by about 6 m / 20 ft. Calling it a modern-style shark hides major evolutionary distance. Maximum length and mass are exceptional upper-end figures.
Habitat and diet
Cladoselache: Devonian seas; small fishes. Great white shark: Temperate seas worldwide; fish, rays and marine mammals.
Bite evidence
Cladoselache: No usable maximum-force model exists. Great white shark: A 3-D finite-element model predicted the bite of a very large individual; it was not measured on a living shark.
Fossils change the certainty
At least one animal is known from fossils. Fossil length, weight and bite estimates depend on which living analogues and scaling equations researchers choose.
TRACE THE CLAIMS