A new study from the Goethe University of Frankfurt suggests that modern great white sharks may have contributed to the extinction of megalodon sharks through dietary competition, according to the journal Nature Communications.
Also called “megateeth” or “big tooth sharks,” megalodons were one of the largest fish that ever lived on Earth. They used to consume 2,500 pounds of food daily and had an average body size three times that of the great white shark current largest.
The strength of a megalodon was so formidable that one bite was powerful enough to crush any normal sized car.
Without However, when it comes to survival, it seems that the relatively smaller and weaker great white shark beat out the “megalodon”. A team of researchers analyzed the zinc content found in the tooth enamel of white and megalodon sharks. The analysis revealed several important details about when modern and extinct shark species coexisted.
🦈 Analysis of the teeth of large fish from the past and present raises the possibility that white sharks and megalodons competed for the same food and the first ones won
🖋 @MACriado en @materia_ciencia https://t.co/W4ju7in7iX— EL PAÍS América (@elpais_america) May 23,
Isotopes of zinc explain shark diet
Since sharks do not have bones, scientists around the world routinely use tooth fossils to study extinct shark species. The same is true of megalodon sharks, which lived for about 23 million years ago. years to 3.6 million years ago.
A team of researchers from Goethe University developed a method to study the feeding behavior and trophic levels of sharks using zinc isotopes. They compared the diets of 13 extinct shark species with 20 alive by analyzing the values of zinc isotopes preserved in their teeth.
Zinc is an environmental marker that indicates where an animal is in a food web. While explaining his approach, study corresponding author Jeremy McCormack of Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, told ZME Science that zinc is incorporated into the enamel or enamel of many animals ( including sharks), and the ratio of heavier to lighter zinc isotopes is indicative of how high up an animal is along the food chain, meaning “we can infer a relative trophic level by comparing the proportions of zinc isotopes in the enamelid of different animals or individuals”.
When the researchers analyzed the isotope values of zinc for the great white shark and Otodus megalodon, found that the values overlapped. These findings further suggested that both shark species coexisted and competed for the same types of prey during the early Pliocene period (2.31 to 5.33 million years). They occupied the same role in the food chain, which means that they competed with each other.
“Our research suggests that the megalodon and the great white shark fed on the same trophic levels when they coexisted. There was probably at least some overlap in prey species between the megalodon and the great white shark,” Dr McCormack said.
The researchers state that this is the first study of zinc isotopes in non-mammalian vertebrates and further investigations of this type involving zinc isotopes could reveal significant information about the feeding habits and evolutionary characteristics of extinct marine species.
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