Scientists find new details about the giant megalodon shark

The megalodon is an notorious prehistoric creature, identified for being a monstrous beast, usually portrayed in movies and books. However scientists have truly found that this notorious beast might have been extra slender than beforehand thought.

The enormous shark, which is said to the trendy day nice white shark, lived about 15 to three.6 million years in the past. Earlier analysis has put its size at a whopping 50 to 65 toes, with many artists depicting a large set creature that seems to be a huge model of the good white.

Nevertheless, a brand new examine printed within the journal Palaeontologia Electronica discovered that its physique was truly extra elongated. The researchers got here to this discovering by learning a set of megalodon fossil vertebrae and the variations of their estimated physique lengths. The analysis group consisted of 26 shark specialists throughout 29 worldwide establishments.

Whereas evaluating the megalodon vertebra fossils to these of kin presently nonetheless alive as we speak, they realized “a discrepancy between two beforehand printed lengths for a similar megalodon specimen,” based on DePaul College paleobiology professor Kenshu Shimada.

The scientists then had a “eureka second.”

“It was nonetheless a large, predatory shark. However the outcomes strongly counsel that the megalodon was not merely a bigger model of the trendy nice white shark,” UCR biologist and first writer of the examine, Phillip Sternes, stated in a abstract of the findings. “Although it stays unsure precisely how lengthy the physique of O. megalodon was elongated relative to the good white shark, this new discovering marks a serious scientific breakthrough within the quest to decipher what megalodon seemed like.”

This isn’t to say that the traditional creature was any much less fearsome. The researchers nonetheless imagine this is likely one of the largest marine predators ever to have lived. However these findings will permit scientists to grasp extra in regards to the predator, and in flip, the way it impacted the encompassing oceans and marine ecosystems.

If the megalodon did have an extended physique, it will additionally counsel that they’d an extended digestive canal, the examine reported. This may increasingly have meant that they didn’t need to eat as often as beforehand thought.

“With elevated capability to digest its meals, it may have gone for longer without having to hunt. This implies much less predation stress on different marine creatures,” Sternes stated. “If I solely need to eat one whale from time to time, whale populations would stay extra secure over time.”

Scientists can’t affirm precisely what prompted the wipe out of those predators 6 million years in the past, however it’s thought that local weather change had a task. Because the waters received cooler, the large animal might not have been capable of maintain its physique temperature. It may be all the way down to a scarcity of prey for a similar causes.

“I imagine there have been a mixture of things that led to the extinction, however one in every of them might have been the emergence of the good white shark, which was presumably extra agile, making it a good higher predator than the megalodon,” Sternes stated. “That competitors for meals might have been a significant component in its demise. Now that we all know it was a thinner shark, we have to reinvestigate its way of life, the way it actually lived, and what prompted it to die. This examine represents a serious stepping stone for others to observe up on.”

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