When Tim Flannery was a boy he found a fossilised tooth of the giant shark megalodon at a Port Philip Bay beach near his home. This remarkable find—the tooth was large enough to cover his palm—sparked an interest in palaeontology that was to inform his life’s work and a lifelong quest to uncover the secrets of the world’s largest ever predator, the great shark Otodus megalodon.

Tim passed on his love of the natural world and interest in the fossil record to his daughter, Emma, a scientist and writer. And now, together, they have written a fascinating account of this ancient marine creature.

Big Meg charts the evolution of megalodon, its super-predator status for about fifteen million years and its decline and extinction. It delves into the fossil record to answer questions about its behaviour and role in shaping marine ecosystems as well as its impact on the human psyche. It contains stories of the scientist and amateur fossil hunters who have scoured the seas, and land, for fossil remains, drawn to the beauty and mystique of the great shark, sometimes meeting their death in the process.

Like the fossil record itself, this enthralling story is a piece of the great natural history of our planet.