Scientists have found traces of the deadly fight Megalodon with a sperm whale

According to the researchers, the traces of the attack, preserved in the form of notches on the teeth of the sperm whale, are the first

evidence in the fossil record that megalodon sharks engaged in fights with sperm whales.

"It would seem that these basking sharks hunted whatever they wanted , and no marine animal was immune to attacks by these basking sharks," said the lead authorStephen Godfrey, Curator of Paleontology at the Calvert Maritime Museum in the Solomon Islands,Maryland in an interview with Live Science.

The tooth is all that remains of the ancientsperm whale. Study co-founder Norman Riker, an amateur fossil collector from Dowell, Maryland, discovered it at what is now a phosphate mine in North Carolina in the 1970s. The mine was then open to fossil collectors. Riker later donated the tooth to the Calvert Maritime Museum.

Researchers are not sure exactly whenthere was a fight between a shark and a whale. To get to the older, phosphate-rich strata, miners dumped sediment and dumped it nearby, where fossil gatherers could wash and study it, Godfrey said. Different layers of rocks that are deposited over time and therefore are used to date objects in these layers have mixed. Because of it, scientists don't know if the tooth comes from older sedimentary strata that date it to the Miocene, 14 million years ago, or from younger fossil strata that date it to the Pliocene, about 5 million years ago.

In any case, the tooth belongs to the periodNeogene (23–2.5 million years ago). During this period, the Earth's climate was warmer than it is today, and as a result, there was less ice at the North and South Poles, so sea levels were higher. That's why "coastal North Carolina was covered by the vast, shallow waters of the Atlantic Ocean," Godfrey notes. “These sea waters are teeming with marine life.”

According to Godfrey, size and shapeThe curved tooth, 11.6 cm long, indicates that it belongs to an extinct species of sperm whale. The researchers also concluded that this particular whale was small, only about 4 meters long. Godfrey noted that modern sperm whales can reach a length of more than 15 m.

Three notches on the tooth indicate that itbitten by either the shark Otodus chubutensis (which lived from 28 to 13 million years ago) or its descendant Otodus megalodon (which lived from 20 to 3.5 million years ago).

None of the other fossilsSharks known from phosphate mines do not have teeth large enough to leave these bite marks on a sperm whale's tooth. Until now, bite marks from these giant sharks (more than 18 meters in length) have been found on other bones of extinct whales and dolphins, but never on the head or other bones of sperm whales.

Read more

Japan unveils new engine that will allow rockets to explore deep space

Two new dinosaur species discovered in China

There is a method of using quantum computers in everyday conditions