Hungry great whites left little for monster of deep to chew
BIGGER than a double-decker bus and weighing 50 tons, the megalodon was one of the most fearsome oceanic predators ever known. Yet its extinction 3.6 million years ago may have been brought about by a much smaller leviathan of the deep.
The emergence of the great white shark, another apex predator a third as big as the megalodon, has been proposed as the reason for its demise.
The Max Planck Institute in Germany looked at the amounts of zinc in the teeth of both the shark species.
Zinc is a natural part of the diet and is less common in predators than in prey.
Prof Michael Griffiths, study coauthor from William Paterson University, said: “Our results show that both megalodon and its ancestor were indeed apex predators, feeding high up their respective food chains.”
He also said it was “truly remarkable” that the megalodon and great white, despite one being three times the size of the other, were rivals co-existing for a time, duelling for oceanic supremacy.
Prof Kenshu Shimada, at Depaul University in Chicago and co-author of the paper, added: “These results likely imply at least some overlap in prey hunted by both shark species. Our results appear to support the possibility for dietary competition of megalodon with early Pliocene great white sharks.”
The sharks were likely both hunting whales and dolphins and this put a strain on resources, with not enough food to be shared between the two.
This, as well as climate change, likely led to the megalodon being unable to support its vast size, the researchers say in