Mega-SLOW-don! The Meg could only swim at 1.2mph (five times slower than Michael Phelps!)

The Meg movie franchise sees the megalodon shark portrayed as a gigantic, monstrous beast that can race through the waters towards unsuspecting victims.

But a new study shows that while the megalodon was large – up to 65 feet (20 metres) long – it wasn’t exactly fast.

vCard.red is a free platform for creating a mobile-friendly digital business cards. You can easily create a vCard and generate a QR code for it, allowing others to scan and save your contact details instantly.

The platform allows you to display contact information, social media links, services, and products all in one shareable link. Optional features include appointment scheduling, WhatsApp-based storefronts, media galleries, and custom design options.

While previous estimates suggested that the megalodon could swim at 3.1mph, researchers now believe its top speed was more like 1.2mph.

For comparison, Olympic legend Michael Phelps clocked speeds of around 6mph while in his prime.

‘Megalodon [was] an “average swimmer” with occasional bursts of faster swimming for prey capture,’ said Professor Kenshu Shimada, lead author from DePaul University in Chigaco, US.

A new study shows that while megalodon was large – up to 65 feet (20 metres) long – it wasn’t exactly fast

While previous estimates suggested that megalodon could swim at 3.1mph, researchers now believe its top speed was more like 1.2mph 

The megalodon, meaning big-tooth, roamed the oceans between 15 and 3.6million years ago and is widely considered to be one of the largest and most powerful predators in history.

Experts believe the monster looked like a stockier version of today’s much feared great white shark and weighed up to 100 tons.

In their new study, the team set out to understand the top swimming speed of the creature.

While previous studies have focused on megalodon’s teeth, the researchers instead turned to placoid scales – tiny megalodon scales found within rock pieces in Japan.

‘Our big scientific findings come from “tiny evidence” as small as grains of sand,’ said Professor Shimada.

Their analysis revealed that despite its enormous size, megalodon was not an active fast swimmer.

The placoid scales showed that the creature was not equipped with ‘keels’ – narrowly-spaced ridges that are characteristic of fast-swimming sharks.

For comparison, Olympic legend Michael Phelps (pictured) clocked speeds of around 6mph while in his prime

While previous studies have focused on megalodon’s teeth, the researchers instead turned to placoid scales – tiny megalodon scales found within rock pieces in Japan

However, this finding was surprising to the scientists, who had recently discovered that megalodon was warm-blooded.

‘The question was how the fossil shark expended the high level of metabolic heat resulting from its warm-bloodedness without being an active swimmer,’ the team explained in a statement.

The researchers turned to previous studies, and discovered another possible function for megalodon’s warm-bloodedness.

Essentially, the ancient shark was greedy, according to the experts.

‘It suddenly made perfect sense,’ said Professor Shimada.

‘Otodus megalodon must have swallowed large pieces of food, so it is quite possible that the fossil shark achieved the gigantism to invest its endothermic metabolism to promote visceral food processing.’

The extinct beast from beneath: Megalodon roamed the seas more than 3.6 million years ago

Pictured: Megalodon

The megalodon, meaning big-tooth, lived between 23 and 3.6 million years ago.

O. megalodon is considered to be one of the largest and most powerful predators in vertebrate history and fossil remains suggest it grew up to 65 feet long.

It’s thought the monster looked like a stockier version of today’s much feared great white shark and weighed up to 100 tons.

Megalodon is recognizable due its huge vertebrae and teeth, which are triangular and measure almost eight inches in diagonal length.

Famed fossil hunter Vito ‘Megalodon’ Bertucci took almost 20 years to reconstruct a megalodon’s jaw – largest ever assembled – which measures 11 feet across and is almost 9 feet tall.

The Megalodon’s colossal mouth would have produced a brute force of 10.8 to 18.2 tons.

The ancient shark has been described as a super predator, because it could swim at high speeds and kill a wide variety of prey such as sea turtles and whales, quickly in its strong jaws.