The long mystery of the Megalodon’s extinction might now be solved by a scientific revelation: a lack of food sources.
Jeremy Cormack, a geoscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his team studied fossils of megalodon and great white sharks, hoping to find out how they interacted with each other millions of years ago. They published their findings in Nature Communications on May 31.
The megalodon (Otodus megalodon) is one of the largest sea creatures ever to be alive. The beast was usually 14-18 meters long. It vanished 2.6 million years ago, around the same time as the great white sharks emerged. The researchers think the megalodon’s extinction may be caused by great white sharks consuming all the food.
Unlike humans, sharks grow and lose their teeth. The growing teeth have enamel on it, which absorbs chemicals from food overtime. When the teeth fossilize, some chemicals get enclosed in the teeth. These chemicals give scientists hints what kind of food animals ate.
The researchers analyzed the fossils and found zinc 64 from teeth of both the great white shark and megalodon. The result suggests that they ate the same types of prey, such as whales, large fish, and other sharks. It is possible that the extinction of the megalodons was due to their loss to great white sharks in the battle for food.
Links:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalodon
https://www.snexplores.org/article/great-white-sharks-megalodon-food-competition-extinction
Jeremy Cormack, a geoscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his team studied fossils of megalodon and great white sharks, hoping to find out how they interacted with each other millions of years ago. They published their findings in Nature Communications on May 31.
The megalodon (Otodus megalodon) is one of the largest sea creatures ever to be alive. The beast was usually 14-18 meters long. It vanished 2.6 million years ago, around the same time as the great white sharks emerged. The researchers think the megalodon’s extinction may be caused by great white sharks consuming all the food.
Unlike humans, sharks grow and lose their teeth. The growing teeth have enamel on it, which absorbs chemicals from food overtime. When the teeth fossilize, some chemicals get enclosed in the teeth. These chemicals give scientists hints what kind of food animals ate.
The researchers analyzed the fossils and found zinc 64 from teeth of both the great white shark and megalodon. The result suggests that they ate the same types of prey, such as whales, large fish, and other sharks. It is possible that the extinction of the megalodons was due to their loss to great white sharks in the battle for food.
Links:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalodon
https://www.snexplores.org/article/great-white-sharks-megalodon-food-competition-extinction
