Latest news with #megalodon
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Megalodon Tooth Millions of Years Old Found in Florida (Video)
Call me crazy, uneducated, or what-have-you, but I thought the ancient Megalodon shark was just a myth. A fabled creature, akin to the kraken, trumpeted by Shark Week and other fear-mongering media, to entice viewers with shock and awe into their programming. Alas, I was wrong. Recently, a diver off the Gulf Coast of Florida made the find of a lifetime, discovering a six-inch tooth from the early Miocene to early Pliocene epochs, ranging from 23 to 3.6 million years ago. It was so rare, shark experts called it: 'Like winning the lottery. One chance in a million or more.' 'We were really close to the ground,' said Kristina Scott, who found the tooth while diving off Venice in Sarasota County with her boyfriend. 'I saw just the root of it, covered in barnacle. I knew the shape. And I pulled it out of the dirt, and started freaking out. I pulled his [her boyfriend's] arm. I was trying to yell with the regulator in my mouth. But yeah, we were just stoked.'When compared to other shark teeth, this megalodon fang makes modern sharks look like sardines. But how big, exactly, were these ancient behemoths. Well, there's only fossil records to go off, but scientists have some ideas. According to a Smithsonian report on the carcharocles megalodon: 'Carcharocles megalodon was once the most fearsome predator to reign the seas. This ancient shark lived roughly 23 to 3.6 million years ago in nearly every corner of the ocean. Roughly up to 3 times the length of a modern-day great white shark, it is the largest shark to have ever lived. It had a powerful bite with a jaw full of teeth as large as an adult human's hand. They likely could tear chunks of flesh from even the largest whales of the time. It should come as no surprise that upon discovery in the fossil record, the massive shark was named Carcharocles megalodon or 'big toothed glorious shark.'' As for the rarity (and potential price tag) of such a find from the diver in Florida – as in, could she cash in on it? – the newscasters could only fathom: 'From our understanding, this is, like, museum-quality stuff…it's a big deal.'Megalodon Tooth Millions of Years Old Found in Florida (Video) first appeared on Surfer on Jun 2, 2025
CNN
28-05-2025
- General
- CNN
What megalodon really ate to meet its 100,000-calorie daily requirement, according to a new study
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. CNN — What scientists understand about the voracious feeding habits of the colossal megalodon could be up for some revision. The prehistoric predator that went extinct about 3.6 million years ago was not hunting only large marine mammals such as whales as researchers widely thought, a new study has found. Instead, minerals in fossilized teeth reveal that megalodon might have been an opportunistic feeder to meet its remarkable 100,000-calorie-per-day requirement. 'When available, it would probably have fed on large prey items, but when not available, it was flexible enough to feed also on smaller animals to fulfill its dietary requirements,' said lead study author Jeremy McCormack, a geoscientist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The study, published Monday in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, also showed there were regional differences in the giant shark's feeding habits. The finding suggests megalodon would pursue whatever was in local waters, devouring other top predators and smaller prey alike. 'They were not concentrating on certain prey types, but they must have fed throughout the food web, on many different species,' McCormack said. 'While certainly this was a fierce apex predator, and no one else would probably prey on an adult megalodon, it's clear that they themselves could potentially feed on almost everything else that swam around.' Megalodon dispatched its prey with a ferocious bite and lethal, serrated teeth that could reach up to 7 inches (18 centimeters) long — the size of a human hand. The superpredator's teeth — abundant in the fossil record — are what McCormack and his colleagues used to conduct a geochemical analysis, unlocking fresh clues that could challenge megalodon's role as sole king of the ancient seas. Zinc in megalodon teeth It's not the first time that a study has challenged previous knowledge about the enormous sea creature. In fact, many questions remain unanswered about Otodus megalodon — its scientific species name meaning 'giant tooth' — since no complete fossil has ever been discovered. The lack of hard evidence stems from the fact that fish skeletons are made of softer cartilage rather than bone, so they don't fossilize very well. Recent research found that the animal was more warm-blooded than other sharks, for example, and there is an ongoing debate about its size and shape. Scientists who created a 3D reconstruction suggest ed in 2022 that megalodon was about three times as long as a great white shark — about 52 feet (16 meters). However, a March study hypothesized that the megashark was actually much larger — up to 80 feet (24 meters) in length and even longer than the fictional version in the 2018 blockbuster 'The Meg,' which suggested the ancient predator was 75 feet (23 meters) from head to tail. As for megalodon's feeding habits, determining what it ate based on fossil evidence poses challenges, according to McCormack. 'We know that they fed on large marine mammals from tooth bite marks,' he said. 'Of course, you can see bite marks on the bones of marine mammals, but you will not see them if they fed on other sharks, because sharks don't have bones. So there's already a bias in this kind of fossil record.' To glean more about megalodon's prey selection, McCormack and his coauthors looked at the giant shark's fossilized teeth and compared them with those of other animals that lived at the same time, as well as teeth from modern sharks and other predators such as dolphins. The researchers used specimens from museum collections and samples from beached animal carcasses. Specifically, the study team conducted a lab analysis of zinc, a mineral that is acquired only through food. Zinc is essential for living organisms and plays a crucial role in tooth development. The ratio of heavy and light zinc isotopes in the sharks' tooth enamel preserves a record of the kind of animal matter that they ate. Different types, or isotopes, of zinc are absorbed when fish and other animals eat, but one of them — zinc-66 — is stored in tooth enamel much less than another, zinc-64. The ratio between those zinc isotopes widens the further away an animal gets from the lowest level of the food chain. That means that a fish eating other fish would have lower levels of zinc-66 compared with zinc-64, and the fish that eat those fish will have even less zinc-66 compared with zinc-64, creating ratio markers that can help draw up a sequence of the food chain. The researchers found that sea bream, a fish that feeds on mussels and crustaceans, was at the bottom of their reconstructed chain, followed by smaller sharks from the Carcharhinus genus, up to 9.8 feet (3 meters) in length, and extinct toothed whales comparable in size to modern dolphins. Farther up were larger sharks such as the Galeocerdo aduncus, similar to a modern tiger shark, and occupying the top slot was megalodon — but its zinc ratios were not so different as to suggest a massive gap with the lower-tier animals, meaning they might have been part of megalodon's diet, too. 'Based on our new results, we see that it was clear it could feed at the very top, but it was flexible enough to feed also on lower (levels of the food chain),' McCormack said. In addition, the researchers found megalodon was not alone at the top of the food chain but instead shared the spot with other 'opportunistic supercarnivores' such as its close relative Otodus chubutensis and the lesser-known Araloselachus cuspidatus, another giant fish-eating shark. That revelation challenges the assumption that megalodon was the exclusive ruler of the oceans and draws comparisons with the great white shark, another large opportunistic feeder. The finding also reinforces the idea that the rise of the great white may have been a factor in megalodon's extinction, according to paleobiologist Kenshu Shimada, one of the coauthors of the latest study. 'One of the contributing factors for the demise of megalodon has been hypothesized to be the rise of the great white shark, which feeds on fish when young and shifts its diet to marine mammals as it becomes larger,' said Shimada, a professor of biological and environmental sciences at DePaul University in Chicago. 'Our new study, that demonstrates the 'diet overlap' between the great white shark and megalodon, strengthens the idea that the evolution of the smaller, likely more agile and maneuverable great white shark could have indeed (driven) megalodon to extinction.' Megalodon vs. great white shark The new research allows scientists to recreate a snapshot of the marine food web that existed about 20 million years ago, according to Jack Cooper, a UK-based paleobiologist and megalodon expert who wasn't involved with the study. 'The general picture of megalodon has been of a gigantic shark munching on whales,' Cooper said in an email. 'This study adds a new dimension that megalodon probably had a wide range of prey — essentially, it probably ate not just whales but whatever it wanted.' Another interesting find, he added, is that megalodon's diet probably varied slightly between different populations, something observed in today's great white sharks. 'This makes sense and is something we would have probably expected since megalodon lived all over the world and not all of its prey items would have done; but it's wonderful to have concrete data supporting this hypothesis,' Cooper said. The study adds to a growing body of evidence that is reshaping commonly held beliefs about megalodon and its close relatives, said Alberto Collareta, a researcher in the department of Earth sciences at Italy's University of Pisa who was not involved in the research. 'These have led us to abandon traditional reconstruction of the megatooth sharks as 'inflated' versions of the modern white shark. We now know that the Megalodon was something else — in terms of size, shape and ancestry, and of biology, too,' Collareta said via email. 'The Miocene (palaeo)ecosystems in question did not work in a radically different way compared to their modern counterparts — even if they feature … completely extinct protagonists such as the megatooth sharks,' he added, highlighting what he found to be the report's key takeaway. 'That said, it is still useful to acknowledge that our understanding of the Meg is essentially limited to its ubiquitous teeth, a few vertebrae and a handful of scales. What I'd really love to see emerging from 'the foggy ruins of time' is a complete Meg skeleton… Let's hope that the fossil record will amaze us once again.'
CNN
27-05-2025
- General
- CNN
Fossil teeth analysis upends what's known about megalodon's diet, scientists say
What scientists understand about the voracious feeding habits of the colossal megalodon could be up for some revision. The prehistoric predator that went extinct about 3.6 million years ago was not hunting only large marine mammals such as whales as researchers widely thought, a new study has found. Instead, minerals in fossilized teeth reveal that megalodon might have been an opportunistic feeder to meet its remarkable 100,000-calorie-per-day requirement. 'When available, it would probably have fed on large prey items, but when not available, it was flexible enough to feed also on smaller animals to fulfill its dietary requirements,' said lead study author Jeremy McCormack, a geoscientist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The study, published Monday in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, also showed there were regional differences in the giant shark's feeding habits. The finding suggests megalodon would pursue whatever was in local waters, devouring other top predators and smaller prey alike. 'They were not concentrating on certain prey types, but they must have fed throughout the food web, on many different species,' McCormack said. While certainly this was a fierce apex predator, and no one else would probably prey on an adult megalodon, it's clear that they themselves could potentially feed on almost everything else that swam around.' Megalodon dispatched its prey with a ferocious bite and lethal, serrated teeth that could reach up to 7 inches (18 centimeters) long — the size of a human hand. The superpredator's teeth — abundant in the fossil record — are what McCormack and his colleagues used to conduct a geochemical analysis, unlocking fresh clues that could challenge megalodon's role as sole king of the ancient seas. It's not the first time that a study has challenged previous knowledge about the enormous sea creature. In fact, many questions remain unanswered about Otodus megalodon — its scientific species name meaning 'giant tooth' — since no complete fossil has ever been discovered. The lack of hard evidence stems from the fact that fish skeletons are made of softer cartilage rather than bone, so they don't fossilize very well. Recent research found that the animal was more warm-blooded than other sharks, for example, and there is an ongoing debate about its size and shape. Scientists who created a 3D reconstruction suggested in 2022 that megalodon was about three times as long as a great white shark — about 52 feet (16 meters). However, a March study hypothesized that the megashark was actually much larger — up to 80 feet (24 meters) in length and even longer than the fictional version in the 2018 blockbuster 'The Meg,' which suggested the ancient predator was 75 feet (23 meters) from head to tail. As for megalodon's feeding habits, determining what it ate based on fossil evidence poses challenges, according to McCormack. 'We know that they fed on large marine mammals from tooth bite marks,' he said. 'Of course, you can see bite marks on the bones of marine mammals, but you will not see them if they fed on other sharks, because sharks don't have bones. So there's already a bias in this kind of fossil record.' To glean more about megalodon's prey selection, McCormack and his coauthors looked at the giant shark's fossilized teeth and compared them with those of other animals that lived at the same time, as well as teeth from modern sharks and other predators such as dolphins. The researchers used specimens from museum collections and samples from beached animal carcasses. Specifically, the study team conducted a lab analysis of zinc, a mineral that is acquired only through food. Zinc is essential for living organisms and plays a crucial role in tooth development. The ratio of heavy and light zinc isotopes in the sharks' tooth enamel preserves a record of the kind of animal matter that they ate. Different types, or isotopes, of zinc are absorbed when fish and other animals eat, but one of them — zinc-66 — is stored in tooth enamel much less than another, zinc-64. The ratio between those zinc isotopes widens the further away an animal gets from the lowest level of the food chain. That means that a fish eating other fish would have lower levels of zinc-66 compared with zinc-64, and the fish that eat those fish will have even less zinc-66 compared with zinc-64, creating ratio markers that can help draw up a sequence of the food chain. The researchers found that sea bream, a fish that feeds on mussels and crustaceans, was at the bottom of their reconstructed chain, followed by smaller sharks from the Carcharhinus genus, up to 9.8 feet (3 meters) in length, and extinct toothed whales comparable in size to modern dolphins. Farther up were larger sharks such as the Galeocerdo aduncus, similar to a modern tiger shark, and occupying the top slot was megalodon — but its zinc ratios were not so different as to suggest a massive gap with the lower-tier animals, meaning they might have been part of megalodon's diet, too. 'Based on our new results, we see that it was clear it could feed at the very top, but it was flexible enough to feed also on lower (levels of the food chain),' McCormack said. In addition, the researchers found megalodon was not alone at the top of the food chain but instead shared the spot with other 'opportunistic supercarnivores' such as its close relative Otodus chubutensis and the lesser-known Araloselachus cuspidatus, another giant fish-eating shark. That revelation challenges the assumption that megalodon was the exclusive ruler of the oceans and draws comparisons with the great white shark, another large opportunistic feeder. The finding also reinforces the idea that the rise of the great white may have been a factor in megalodon's extinction, according to paleobiologist Kenshu Shimada, one of the coauthors of the latest study. 'One of the contributing factors for the demise of megalodon has been hypothesized to be the rise of the great white shark, which feeds on fish when young and shifts its diet to marine mammals as it becomes larger,' said Shimada, a professor of biological and environmental sciences at DePaul University in Chicago. 'Our new study, that demonstrates the 'diet overlap' between the great white shark and megalodon, strengthens the idea that the evolution of the smaller, likely more agile and maneuverable great white shark could have indeed (driven) megalodon to extinction.' The new research allows scientists to recreate a snapshot of the marine food web that existed about 20 million years ago, according to Jack Cooper, a UK-based paleobiologist and megalodon expert who wasn't involved with the study. 'The general picture of megalodon has been of a gigantic shark munching on whales,' Cooper said in an email. 'This study adds a new dimension that megalodon probably had a wide range of prey — essentially, it probably ate not just whales but whatever it wanted.' Another interesting find, he added, is that megalodon's diet probably varied slightly between different populations, something observed in today's great white sharks. 'This makes sense and is something we would have probably expected since megalodon lived all over the world and not all of its prey items would have done; but it's wonderful to have concrete data supporting this hypothesis,' Cooper said. The study adds to a growing body of evidence that is reshaping commonly held beliefs about megalodon and its close relatives, said Alberto Collareta, a researcher in the department of Earth sciences at Italy's University of Pisa who was not involved in the research. 'These have led us to abandon traditional reconstruction of the megatooth sharks as 'inflated' versions of the modern white shark. We now know that the Megalodon was something else — in terms of size, shape and ancestry, and of biology, too,' Collareta said via email. 'The Miocene (palaeo)ecosystems in question did not work in a radically different way compared to their modern counterparts — even if they feature … completely extinct protagonists such as the megatooth sharks,' he added, highlighting what he found to be the report's key takeaway. 'That said, it is still useful to acknowledge that our understanding of the Meg is essentially limited to its ubiquitous teeth, a few vertebrae and a handful of scales. What I'd really love to see emerging from 'the foggy ruins of time' is a complete Meg skeleton… Let's hope that the fossil record will amaze us once again.'
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Giant Megalodon's Prey Finally Revealed, And It's Not What We Thought
Megalodon, the terror of the Neogene, dominated its giant shark niche for just 20 million years before it disappeared from the world's oceans. And, during that time, it hunted anything and everything that crossed its path. It didn't distinguish: if it was large enough to be a snack, megalodon (Odontus megalodon) partook. Scientists have reached that conclusion after studying the teeth of modern sharks, and comparing them to the fossilized teeth of megalodon, almost all we have left of the extinct fish today. This contradicts the theory that the main prey of megalodon was whales. Certainly megalodon could and did eat whales – but its diet as a whole was far more opportunistic. "Our study tends rather to draw a picture of megalodon as an ecologically versatile generalist," says geoscientist Jeremy McCormack of Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany "Megalodon was by all means flexible enough to feed on marine mammals and large fish, from the top of the food pyramid as well as lower levels – depending on availability." Megalodon is an extinct species of shark that lived from around 23 million to around 3.6 million years ago, during which time it occupied a prime position at the top of the food web, before being driven to extinction. We will never know for certain what it looked like; like all sharks, its skeleton was mostly cartilage, and all it left behind was a lot of teeth and a few vertebrae. We know from these remains, however, that megalodon was enormous, with size estimates ranging from around 11 meters to over 40 meters (36 to 131 feet) in length (although the latter is an outlier, and most estimates hover around 13 to 20 meters). That's huge – so huge that scientists think that megalodon may have specialized in large prey. One way to determine the diet of someone who has been dead a long time is to look at isotopes in their teeth. An isotope of an element is an atom that deviates from the norm in the number of neutrons it has in its nucleus, and the ratios of these isotopes vary according to several factors, one of which is diet. This is because when we eat, some of the metals in our food replace some of the calcium in our teeth and bones – not so you notice, obviously, but enough to leave a tracer. McCormack and his colleagues looked specifically at the ratios of two isotopes of zinc – the lighter zinc-64 and the heavier zinc-66. When fish at the bottom of the food web eat, they store less zinc-66 than zinc-64. The fish that eat those fish have even less zinc-66. So when you get to the fish at the very top of the chain, you see the very least zinc-66 compared to zinc-64. This is what the researchers observed in the teeth of megalodon and its cousin, the extinct Odontus chubutensis. The researchers don't really know what was at the bottom of the food chain 18 million years ago, the time from which the megalodon teeth they studied hailed. So, they compared the megalodon teeth with the teeth of sharks that swim the oceans today to work out what the giant predators ate. "Sea bream, which fed on mussels, snails, and crustaceans, formed the lowest level of the food chain we studied," McCormack says. "Smaller shark species such as requiem sharks and ancestors of today's cetaceans, dolphins, and whales, were next. Larger sharks such as sand tiger sharks were further up the food pyramid, and at the top were giant sharks like Araloselachus cuspidatus and the Otodus sharks, which include megalodon." Megalodon's status as a superpredator at the very top of the food web has been established previously. The new research reveals that the isotope difference between megalodon and the animals at the lowest level the researchers studied was not a sharp delineation, suggesting that the shark was not a fussy eater. There were also intriguing differences in megalodon diet depending on where the animals lived. Megalodon teeth found in Passau, Germany, dined more heavily on the lower levels of the food web, the researchers found. This is not dissimilar to the opportunistic hunting approach demonstrated by white sharks (Carcharias carcharodon), which stands to reason: previous work led by McCormack showed that the rise of the white shark was likely one of the drivers that led megalodon to extinction. With competition in its ecological niche, megalodon became more vulnerable. "It gives us important insights into how the marine communities have changed over geologic time," says paleobiologist Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University in the US, "but more importantly the fact that even 'supercarnivores' are not immune to extinction." The research has been published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Earth's Core Holds a Vast Reservoir of Gold, And It's Leaking Toward The Surface Scientists Peered Inside The Echidna's Mysterious 'Pseudo-Pouch' Bizarre Three-Eyed Predator Hunted The Ocean Half a Billion Years Ago
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Megalodon: Scientists Reveal a Crucial Surprise About The Mega-Shark
It remains a sad fact of this world that we will never know for certain what the long-lost megalodon truly looked like – but a new study gives us what may be the most accurate reconstruction yet. An international team led by paleontologist Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University in the US has determined that the megalodon (Odontus megalodon) was probably longer and sleeker than previous interpretations of its scant, mysterious remains. "This study provides the most robust analysis yet of megalodon's body size and shape," says marine biologist Phillip Sternes, formerly of the University of California Riverside, now at SeaWorld. "Rather than resembling an oversized great white shark, it was actually more like an enormous lemon shark, with a more slender, elongated body. That shape makes a lot more sense for moving efficiently through water." The megalodon is one of the most captivating mysteries on the fossil record. It lived from around 23 million to around 3.6 million years ago, during which time it occupied a prime position at the top of the food web, before being driven to extinction. We know it was huge, compared to modern sharks, but learning more about what it looked like is extremely difficult. That's because, like those of today's sharks, megalodon's skeleton was mostly cartilage. Only its teeth and vertebrae have been preserved as fossils on the seafloor, indicating a monster of a shark that could have been anywhere between around 11 meters to over 40 meters (36 to 131 feet) in length. Most estimates settle between around 13 to 18 meters, with the white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) as the basis for their model, using one of the most complete megalodon fossils we have: an almost complete spine found near Belgium measuring 11 meters in length. The white shark is a true powerhouse, one of the fiercest predators in the ocean, so it's easy to see why scientists might turn to it to understand the megalodon. Not all sharks are built alike, though. Rather than examining the megalodon spine in the context of just a handful of species, Shimada and his colleagues compared it against a huge catalog of 145 living and 20 extinct shark species. In particular, they were looking to calculate the length of the body parts not represented by the fossilized vertebral column; that is, the head and the tail of the shark. Their new approach found that if the megalodon's body plan was consistent with most of the other sharks evolution has so elegantly crafted, the extinct predator's head and tail could have represented 16.6 and 32.6 percent of the total body length, respectively, with a sleeker, slimmer body more like that of the lemon shark (Negaprion brevirostris) than the white shark. This means that, for the Belgian individual, the head would have measured 1.8 meters in length and the tail 3.6 meters, making that specific megalodon a total of 16.4 meters wide. Although the Belgian spinal column gives scientists a bunch of related bones to work with, they are not the only megalodon vertebrae paleontologists have found; nor are they the largest. The largest vertebra in the assemblage is 15.5 centimeters (6.5 inches) long. Other vertebrae found near Denmark are reported to be significantly larger, up to 23 centimeters across. Assuming that this represents the largest possible size a megalodon vertebra can reach, the researchers calculated a new top size for the shark. "The length of 24.3 meters is currently the largest possible reasonable estimate for O. megalodon that can be justified based on science and the present fossil record," Shimada says. That length is comparable to two school buses, end-to-end, much larger than most sharks that swim the oceans today, although filter-feeding whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) can reach lengths of 20 meters or so, and actual whales can be significantly larger. The interesting thing about all these large marine animals is that their bodies, also, are long and sleek. The shorter, stockier shape of the white shark is built for short bursts of speed; the longer, sleeker bodies of lemon sharks, whale sharks, and whales are better for more energy-efficient swimming, and minimal drag. A longer, sleeker, more hydrodynamic body would have allowed megalodon to grow much larger than the white shark, whose maximum body size is less than 6 meters, limited by the energy demands of its swimming and hunting style. At 23.4 meters in length, a megalodon would have cruised the oceans at speeds around 2.1 to 3.5 kilometers (1.3 to 2.2 miles) per hour, using sparing speed bursts only when necessary. "This research not only refines our understanding of what megalodon looked like, but it also provides a framework for studying how size influences movement in marine animals," Sternes says. "Gigantism isn't just about getting bigger – it's about evolving the right body to survive at that scale. And megalodon may have been one of the most extreme examples of that." The research has been published in Palaeontologia Electronica. Dead Bacteria Dissolve Their Own Corpses as a Parting Gift For Relatives Stick From a Dead Shrub Reveals Surprising Truth About Its Record Lifespan Scientists Discover Thousands of New Microbes Lurking in The Ocean's Deepest Zone
