It's possible that great white sharks were responsible for the megalodon's extinction.

 

 
Before great white sharks appeared on the scene, the megalodon preyed upon all other marine life in its environment.
 
Around 3.6 million years ago, the megalodon (Otodus megalodon), one of the largest sharks that had ever lived, disappeared from the fossil record for unknown reasons. Great white sharks are suspected by scientists to have been the species in the marine environment that may have been responsible for the extinction of the gigantic predator.
 
According to Jeremy McCormack, a geoscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the lead author of a new study about these prehistoric competitors, the megalodon's decline may have coincided with the rise of great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias), which likely hunted the same prey as their larger cousin. McCormack told Live Science in an email that previous research hypothesized that the decline may have coincided with the rise. The discovery of bite marks on the bones of other marine animals lends credence to this proposal as an explanation for the megalodon's sudden extinction. These wounds were left by both great white sharks and megalodons, which leads one to speculate that the two species may have competed for the same food resources.
 
According to McCormack, however, these bite marks merely provided a glimpse of the isolated interactions between the predator and the prey. A more in-depth analysis of both species' diets is required to determine whether or not great white sharks caused the megalodon's extinction.
 
To accomplish this, McCormack and his coworkers looked for hints in the teeth of the animals. However, rather than focusing on the size or shape of the teeth, they focused on the amount of zinc present in each tooth.
 
According to McCormack, "Zinc is necessary for organisms since it is involved in a significant capacity across a great variety of biological activities." Zinc is, perhaps most crucially, absorbed into teeth as they develop throughout time. While on the hunt, a predator will consume the minerals and nutrients that have been taken from its prey. Zinc is one of these minerals, and it has two isotopes that can be found in nature (variations of the same element with a different number of neutrons). The weight of one isotope of zinc is different from that of the other. Other researchers who have investigated animal teeth have shown that the ratio of heavier to lighter zinc isotopes in an animal's teeth can reveal where that species falls in a food chain. Suppose an animal's teeth have a higher concentration of the lighter isotope and a lower concentration of the heavier. In that case, this indicates that the species is higher up the food chain in its ecosystem. However, if the teeth contain a greater quantity of the heavier isotope, there is a good possibility that the animal is a carnivore. With these zinc ratios, scientists can determine with a high degree of precision the trophic position of a prehistoric species.
 
The teeth of twenty different fish species were analyzed by McCormack and his colleagues, including sharks from both wild and captivity-based populations. After that, the researchers compared the zinc ratios found in the teeth of the current fish to those found in the teeth of extinct megalodons and ancient great white sharks.
 
According to prior reporting by Live Science, the evolution of great white sharks occurred roughly 4 million years ago, when they coexisted alongside megalodon for approximately 400,000 years. At the beginning of their coexistence, megalodons and great white sharks occupied distinct niches and were not directly competing with one another. However, the researchers found evidence of a change in that connection in the zinc ratios of fossil shark teeth. This change caused the sharks to physically contact one another by bumping their fins. When the early Pliocene period began, approximately 5.3 million years ago, certain populations of great white sharks started moving up the food chain to become top predators themselves. As a result, they began to invade the territory of megalodons. This would have meant that the two species were then forced to share resources, which would have resulted in the more effective hunter driving out the less effective one, ultimately leading to the extinction of both species.
 
According to what the researchers said in the report, "the extinction of Otodus megalodon could have been driven by many compounding environmental and ecological causes." This is in addition to the fact that great white sharks killed off the species. In addition to being out-sharked by great whites, these reasons may have included climatic change and the general depletion of all available food resources.
 
The results of this investigation were presented in a paper published on May 31 in the journal Nature Communications.

 

 

Article source : https://www.livescience.com/great-white-sharks-megalodon-extinction

 Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/photos/hiu-ikan-laut-bawah-air-akuarium-164899/

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