With 276 teeth and a body longer than a bus, this is Megalodon, the largest shark in the history of faunal development. Scientists
According to scientists, megalodon became extinct around 3.6 million years ago.years ago. It and great white sharks ate the same food around the same time Megalodon went extinct, according to a new study. Scientists also believe that megalodon was too large and was affected by climate change.
Yes, there was competition for prey, but this is notmeans great white sharks were the sole cause of the megalodon's extinction, said study author and University of Frankfurt geophysicist Jeremy McCormack. Most likely, in his opinion, this was one of the many factors that doomed the megalodon to death.
According to Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology at Museums Victoria, the megalodon was incredibly large and this did not play into its favor.
What do we know about megalodon?
Length: up to 18 meters
Weight: up to 50 tons
Number of teeth: 276 in a row
Mouth size: 2.7 by 3.4 m
Bite force: 108,000 to 182,000 N (for comparison: a human bite force is 1,317 N, and a great white is 18,000 N)
Megalodon - Otodus megalodon or Carcharoclesmegalodon - lived approximately 20 to 3.6 million years ago. The shark had a cartilaginous skeleton that decomposes rather than fossilizes. But his huge teeth have survived an eternity.
Paleontologists can draw quite a few conclusionsabout megalodon only by its teeth. For example, they are pointed, so they are ideal for tearing flesh. The chemical composition of megalodon teeth helped to learn more about what was on the menu of the giant shark.
Unlike people who in their entire lives haveWith only two sets of teeth, sharks are constantly losing and regrowing them. Growing teeth have a hard layer of enamel with chemicals from shark food, such as zinc. When these teeth are petrified, some of the chemical elements remain locked inside, so, after a while, they can be studied and analyzed. This is what the authors of the new work did.
What did megalodons eat?
The scientists used a relatively new research method called zinc isotope ratio analysis. They took a dental drill and shaved small pieces of enamel from their teeth.
Then we used laboratory equipment, withwhich can be used to identify molecules in a sample. They were looking for two types of zinc—the first slightly heavier than the second—and wanted to understand how much of each was present.
A diet rich in fish and squid would showslightly different ratio of zinc isotopes compared to a diet consisting mainly of seals, for example, Dr. McCormack said. He added that the ratio of lighter to heavy zinc increases as you move up the food chain.
The researchers first analyzed the teeth of 20 species of sharks that live today to see if zinc isotope ratios could tell us more about their diet. It worked.
The team then used the same technique on the teeth13 extinct shark species, including megalodon. Around the time that megalodons became extinct, they and great white sharks ate the same food - large warm-blooded animals, probably whales.
This is confirmed by the fossilized bones of whales with traces of megalodon bites, and sometimes with broken tips of teeth ingrown into them.
And yet, what killed the megalodon?
University of New England paleontologist NicholasCampione, who was not involved in the study, said that 3.6 million years ago, the great white shark and megalodon had the same diet, but that this was not the main cause of extinction. At that time, much more events were happening on Earth.
“The heyday in the history of megalodons is verya pleasant time, indeed. The temperature was pretty stable back then,” Dr. Campione said. But at the same time, ice sheets began to form in Antarctica. This means that there was a general global cooling, but the temperature did not drop to critical values.
As the Earth sank deeper and deeper intoIce Age, ice sheets began to grow in both hemispheres of the Earth. Because of this, ocean currents changed and sea levels dropped. The crisis also affected species that lived near the shore: megalodons actively fed on them. This time also coincides with the extinction of many species of whales, especially small ones. Because of this, the diet of predators begins to suffer.
The researchers asked:if megalodons and great white sharks ate the same thing, why didn't they die out together, or why didn't only white sharks die out. After all, there was practically nothing to eat and that, and that.
The authors of the new work answer that it was inthe size of predators. To survive, the megalodon needed several times more food than the white shark. It is not known how many babies the megalodon had and how often they were born, but usually, the larger the organism, the more difficult it is to maintain a stable population. In such a situation, you need to breed more, but more individuals require more resources.
All these factors contributed much moreextinction of the species, so competition did not play such an important role here. Scientists have concluded that the megalodon most likely died due to its enormous size and climate change, which left it no chance of survival.
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