I bet you’ve heard of the famous great white shark, right? But maybe you don’t know about the megalodon. Megalodon or Otodus megalodon was an enormous creature that used to roam Earth’s oceans about 2.6 million years ago. Scientists believe that megalodons were in their happy place until great white sharks appeared and took charge, and competed with megalodons for food. So, how exactly did researchers find out about this? Well, scientists aren’t positive, but here is one experiment they tested.
Competing for Food
As we said, scientists believe that great whites were the ones to arrive on the scene later and to begin to interfere with megalodons, who were here first. Researchers ran an experiment to find out more. Scientists collected some teeth from both beasts, and examined them. Apparently, there are two types of zinc. One is named zinc-66 and the other is called zinc-64. “The share of each isotope in tooth enamel can offer clues about where an animal fell within a food web. Plants—and plant eaters [or herbivores]—have a lot of zinc-66 [ in their tooth enamel] compared with zinc-64. Being higher up the food web, animals [—and predators that eat animals—] have relatively more zinc-64,” Science News Explores says. The results from the great white’s tooth enamel and that of the megalodon were very similar, and this indicates that the two creatures ate the same types of prey. But there may be more to it.
Another reason scientists think the megalodon died out was a scarcity of prey. Climate change may also be to blame. When the weather turned colder at both poles, megalodons were not able to adapt to the cold, but the great whites could. The megalodons stayed in warmer waters, and the great whites ate most of the prey in the colder oceans, so there wasn’t enough prey in the warmer areas where the megalodons stayed, so, sadly, the megalodons became extinct.
So, the great white shark wasn’t necessarily the main reason why the megalodon died out—it could have been a combination of great whites, other sharks, and climate change. In any case, megalodons disappeared, leaving behind only their gargantuan jaw bones and their huge teeth for 21st-century scientists to analyze. The great white shark, however, is still with us today.
Competing for Food
As we said, scientists believe that great whites were the ones to arrive on the scene later and to begin to interfere with megalodons, who were here first. Researchers ran an experiment to find out more. Scientists collected some teeth from both beasts, and examined them. Apparently, there are two types of zinc. One is named zinc-66 and the other is called zinc-64. “The share of each isotope in tooth enamel can offer clues about where an animal fell within a food web. Plants—and plant eaters [or herbivores]—have a lot of zinc-66 [ in their tooth enamel] compared with zinc-64. Being higher up the food web, animals [—and predators that eat animals—] have relatively more zinc-64,” Science News Explores says. The results from the great white’s tooth enamel and that of the megalodon were very similar, and this indicates that the two creatures ate the same types of prey. But there may be more to it.
Another reason scientists think the megalodon died out was a scarcity of prey. Climate change may also be to blame. When the weather turned colder at both poles, megalodons were not able to adapt to the cold, but the great whites could. The megalodons stayed in warmer waters, and the great whites ate most of the prey in the colder oceans, so there wasn’t enough prey in the warmer areas where the megalodons stayed, so, sadly, the megalodons became extinct.
So, the great white shark wasn’t necessarily the main reason why the megalodon died out—it could have been a combination of great whites, other sharks, and climate change. In any case, megalodons disappeared, leaving behind only their gargantuan jaw bones and their huge teeth for 21st-century scientists to analyze. The great white shark, however, is still with us today.
