By: Hannah Yang
Megalodons are a species of shark that went extinct about 3.6 to 23 million years ago, from the Early Miocene to the Pliocene epochs. It was formerly thought to be a member of the Lamnidae family and was a close relative of today’s Great White Sharks. Now, scientists may have found the secret to their extinction. After analyzing shark teeth from these two species, researchers believe that perhaps competition for the same food sources helped cause the megalodons to become extinct.
The megalodon shark was one of the biggest fish to ever swim in the seas when it lived as the average megalodon was three times the size of the longest Great White shark ever discovered. Despite their size, the Great Whites pushed the Megalodons to extinction, taking their place as the ruler of the ocean. A
The team, led by Jeremy Cormack, a geoscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, has tried to piece together why the Megalodon shark may have died out about 3.5 million years ago, about when the great white sharks emerged.
“To figure out if the two sharks dined on similar food, the researchers looked at the zinc in their teeth. Zinc has two main forms or isotopes. One is zinc-66. The other is zinc-64,” Carolyn Gramling of Science News explained. “The share of each isotope in tooth enamel can offer clues about where an animal fell within a food web. Plants — and plant eaters — have a lot of zinc-66, compared with zinc-64. Being higher up the food web, animals have relatively more zinc-64.”
Moreover, as the megalodons had trouble hunting, the Great Whites may have faced similar difficulties. This issue may have caused the Great Whites and Megalodons to hunt each other. If the megalodon were unsuccessful, the Great Whites might have led to the megalodon’s demise.
However, although the sharks fought over the same prey, researchers believe it may not be the only cause. Some other scientists argue that the global water temperature drop due to climate change could have also caused the megalodons to become extinct. Consequently, the megalodon living in warm waters were left without their primary food source. Combined with the fact that megalodons competed with the Great White Sharks, who hunted the same prey, the megalodons soon quickly lost their position as kings of the ocean.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/31/world/great-white-sharks-megalodon-scn/index.html