I have an article around here somewhere form the 80s? where a dude in Aussie caught a big one...I think it was Vic Hislop. I am not sure of the length but I thought it said 7m / 2.6 tons 80yr old. But the one thing I do remember from the article was prior to catching it He was in a pub with some american game fisherman who were stoked to have caught a 250kg gamefish and Vic responds ....Cool, I lost a 250kg bait today...heading back out tomorrow.....
With regards to the larger historical / exticnt ones you mentioned, Part of the reason we had Mega fauna and mega flora (dinosaurs etc) was the CO2 in the atmosphere was many times higher than it is today and this caused very rapid growth of flora resulting in ecosystems that could support larger faster growing fauna. And I also know that sharks were present nearly that far back, if not present at that time so it would stand to reason with enough food etc it would be possible for these to grow larger....I dont think there is enough food supply for them to regularly grow that big now, but there is a lot of unexpored ocean so I would never say it could not happen.
Another interesting titbit re sharks and peoples fear of them (unrsaonable?...Maybe) is that there are nearly 300 species of shark...of that about 7 are known maneaters and another 4 or 5 species supected .....(this is older information circa 2000 so may have changed slightly) And those maneater species are mostly due to the fact we are about the same size as their ususal food source....
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