Megalodon enamel have all the time been key to understanding the traditional marine predator. Fossilized enamel are all that stay to show the existence of those huge sharks, and the title megalodon is from the Greek for “huge tooth.”
A brand new research, printed in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, highlights the significance of the megalodon’s human-hand-sized enamel as soon as once more. Due to extracting and analyzing the traces of zinc left within the fossilized enamel, researchers now know that the megalodon’s weight loss program was a lot broader than scientists as soon as believed.
“Megalodon was by all means versatile sufficient to feed on marine mammals and enormous fish, from the highest of the meals pyramid in addition to decrease ranges – relying on availability,” stated Jeremy McCormack from the Division of Geosciences at Goethe College, in a press launch.
Learn Extra: The Large Megalodon Might Have Been Even Longer and Sleeker
What Did the Megalodon Eat?
Clocking in at 78 toes in size and weighing about twice as a lot as a semi truck, the megalodon was an enormous fish with an enormous urge for food. It’s prompt {that a} member of the Otodus shark household would require about 100,000 kilocalories per day to outlive. Attributable to this excessive quantity, scientists have typically assumed that the megalodon’s essential supply of energy got here from whales.
This new research means that whales weren’t the one merchandise on the megalodon’s each day menu and that these sharks have been truly fairly adaptable when it got here to their meals. The analysis staff analyzed 18-million-year-old big enamel that got here from two fossil deposits in Sigmaringen and Passau. What they have been in search of was the presence of zinc-66 and zinc-64, two isotopes generally ingested with meals.
Usually, the upper up in a meals pyramid an animal is, the decrease the presence of zinc. As they’re oftentimes on the high of the meals chain, species corresponding to Otodus megalodon and Otodus chubutensis have a low ratio of zinc-66 to zinc-64 in comparison with species decrease on the meals chain.
“Sea bream, which consumed mussels, snails, and crustaceans, shaped the bottom stage of the meals chain we studied,” stated McCormack within the press launch. “Smaller shark species corresponding to requiem sharks and ancestors of at present’s cetaceans, dolphins, and whales, have been subsequent. Bigger sharks, corresponding to sand tiger sharks, have been additional up the meals pyramid, and on the high have been big sharks like Araloselachus cuspidatus and the Otodus sharks, which embody megalodon.”
Surprisingly, the zinc ranges within the megalodon enamel weren’t all the time that completely different from the zinc ranges in species decrease down the meals chain. This end result implies that the generally held scientific perception that megalodons targeted their consideration on consuming massive marine mammals could also be incorrect.
As an alternative, McCormack refers back to the megalodon as an “ecologically versatile generalist” that tailored to environmental and regional constraints that modified the supply and number of their prey.
A New Technique in Tooth Testing
Utilizing the zinc content material of fossilized enamel is a comparatively new technique of study, and the analysis staff engaged on the megalodon couldn’t be happier with their outcomes. The strategies used on this research haven’t solely been used for prehistoric shark and whale species but in addition modern-day shark species, and have even been used on herbivorous prehistoric rhinoceroses.
Total, these new strategies have begun to rewrite the historical past of megalodon’s consuming habits and should assist to elucidate extra about why these giants of the meals chain went extinct.
“[Determining zinc isotope ratios] provides us essential insights into how the marine communities have modified over geologic time, however extra importantly the truth that even ‘supercarnivores’ aren’t proof against extinction,” stated Kenshu Shimada, a paleobiologist at DePaul College and a coauthor of this research, within the press launch.
Learn Extra: The Large Megalodon Shark Was No Chilly-Blood Killer
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