Structure and Formation
François Schweizer studied NGC 1316 extensively in the late 1970s. He found that the galaxy appeared to look like a small elliptical galaxy with some unusual dust lanes embedded within a much larger envelope of stars. The outer envelope contained many ripples, loops, and arcs. He also identified the presence of a compact disk of gas near the center that appeared inclined relative to the stars and that appeared to rotate faster than the stars. Based on these results, Schweizer suggested that NGC 1316 was built up through the merger of several smaller galaxies. These merger events may have fueled the central supermassive black hole, that has a mass estimated in 130-150 million of solar masses with gas, causing the galaxy to become a radio galaxy. He also states that NGC 1316 is comparable to the giant elliptical galaxies found in the centers of other clusters of galaxies. Using spectroscopy of its brightest globular clusters, the merger is estimated to have occurred ~3 Gyr ago.
It has been proposed too that NGC 1316 may be a galaxy in evolution that eventually will become a Sombrero-like system dominated by a large bulge
Read more about this topic: NGC 1316
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