Great white shark is about 1.20× longer by these reference values.
Great white shark uses a 6 m upper reference, compared with 5 m for Squalicorax. 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
Squalicorax is represented by estimated to about 5 m / 16 ft; Great white shark by about 6 m / 20 ft. Body length and ecology are reconstructed from incomplete fossil evidence. Maximum length and mass are exceptional upper-end figures.
Habitat and diet
Squalicorax: Late Cretaceous oceans; fishes, marine reptiles and carrion. Great white shark: Temperate seas worldwide; fish, rays and marine mammals.
Bite evidence
Squalicorax: Bite traces show feeding, not maximum force. 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