To get to the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s (HMNS) new exhibit, Sharks! The Meg, the Monsters & the Myths, you first have to descend a winding staircase into the basement. Once you’re subterranean, walk under an arch of faux rocks and through a circular hallway wrapped with a photograph of a coral reef, both lit to mimic the way light scatters across a shallow ocean floor. Inside, you’re greeted by a fleet of digital sharks of various sizes propelling themselves across the screen of a 360-square-foot virtual tank. Several life-size shark models hang from the ceiling—including a very well-snouted sawshark, a wide-finned angelshark, and a basking shark with its mouth characteristically agape.

Although these big fish look rather harmless in their repose, entering the next room will land you face-to-face with a very large shark you most definitely wouldn’t want to meet in real life—fortunately, you don’t have to, since megalodons went extinct some 3.5 million years ago.

If you stretched the hulking, life-size megalodon model out, it would measure about 51 feet from snout to tail. The distance from its belly to its dorsal ridge is nine feet, the typical height of a male ostrich. If you’re looking for a dorsal fin, you won’t find it. Unable to fit it into the space, the fin, which would add another foot to the shark’s height, holds court on the floor above, painted with text advertising the exhibit.

Since the exhibit’s opening in late May, the megalodon model has become extremely popular with museum goers. Nicole Temple, the VP of education at HMNS and the exhibit’s curator, says many photos have already been snapped in front of the model’s large, teeth-filled mouth. “If you haven’t gotten your shot in front of an open-mouthed megalodon, what are you even doing with your life,” she laughs. Temple has taken to personally calling the megalodon model Meghan.

Temple notes the museum team wanted to make the model realistic: 51 feet is on the higher end of what a female megalodon would measure when fully grown. These sharks were huge animals that needed about 100,000 calories a day, usually obtained through a diet of extra-large sea turtles and whales. The giant creatures swam around the equatorial band of the entire globe while hunting for food, an eating practice that led to their extinction when tectonic plates shifted and the passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was cut off.

“The water temperatures changed on both sides, the currents changed, the saltiness of the ocean changed. The animals on either side had to adapt,” Temple says. “Because of these changes, [megalodons] no longer had access to the food they once had through the casual Atlantic to Pacific route they had been taking. It was such a big animal that it ended up going extinct because it couldn’t find enough to eat.”

Perhaps an even bigger challenge than finding 100,000 calories to consume in a day? Moving the megalodon model into the museum.

Meghan, like several other items in the exhibit, was crafted by local design and fabrication firm Rootlab, which also worked on the museum’s King Tut’s Tomb Discover Experience. The core of the model is a laser-cut steel tube structure that includes plywood and cables. On top of that core are several sections of expanded polystyrene, a type of foam, that were milled using a giant industrial robot, then glued together to form larger foam pieces and hard-coated.

“We dimensioned all of the pieces so that they would be, as much as possible, less than 100 pounds each,” says Michael Boyd, Rootlab’s director of production. “For all of the parts, we tried to keep the weight in mind because we knew we were going to be in the basement and we wouldn’t be able to use a forklift to maneuver the parts of it around.”

Although many of Meghan’s foam components were able to stay under that 100-pound threshold, each of the three sections of her head ended up weighing around 250 pounds. Unable to fit them in an elevator or carry them downstairs, they had to be placed in giant steel and plywood cradles, then carefully lowered one by one into the basement through a large hatch in the museum’s loading dock, with the help of a forklift with a special extension that allowed it to act like a crane.

Meghan’s heavy and hard-to-maneuver tail fin, crafted from fiberglass and weighing about 300 pounds, also had to be lowered through the hatch. Other smaller parts made it into the space by way of an elevator or by being carried down the stairs. After all the components of the model were there, the megalodon was assembled and then painted onsite.

Although there are plenty of exacting Meghans out there, from Markle to McCain, it’s safe to say that the HMNS’ Meghan is the one with the most bite.