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Megalodon is the largest shark that’s ever existed.
Picture a great white, but up to three times the size!
And according to Hollywood it’s alive and well,
the superstar of summer blockbuster action movies.
But according to scientists, it’s definitely extinct.
In fact, it’s even more extinct than they thought.
A study published last week in the journal PeerJ
argues megalodon went extinct a million years earlier
than previously estimated
and it was probably thanks to its smaller
cousins.
Now there’s never been any doubt amongst scientists
that megalodon is extinct.
What they aren’t completely sure of is how recently
it went extinct and why.
Fossils of marine vertebrates are rarer than
those of marine invertebrates,
and we know less about the fossilization process
under sea water.
So, the age of some prehistoric marine species—
like megalodon—is still being debated.
In 2014, researchers performed an analysis
of megalodon fossils and estimated they went
extinct around 2.6 million years ago.
But the new study argues that those researchers were off by about a million years.
The 2014 study used a technique called optimal linear estimation analysis which is
essentially a complex mathematical model
to estimate when something went extinct based on
observations of the species— in this case, megalodon fossils.
But the model is only as good as the data you put into it.
And the authors of the new study argue that some of the fossils used as data in the 2014
study were dated incorrectly, mis-identified or
were otherwise unreliable.
The current study used the same optimal linear estimation technique
and many of the same fossils, but they were a lot pickier about which they
included.
They carefully vetted each fossil, considering who collected it and when
and whether it was preserved similarly to other fossils
collected in the same rock layer to make sure they could be confident about
its age.
For instance, some of the youngest fossils of megalodon
included in the 2014 study were collected in a mining quarry in the 1920s,
and the collector didn’t carefully record which rock layer they came from,
which makes it really hard to estimate how old they are.
The authors of the new study excluded fossils they weren’t sure about,
and they paid special attention to ones collected from sites on the California and Baja California
coast which can be confidently dated.
And the new analysis estimates megalodon went extinct
about 3.6 million years ago.
And with this when, the researchers were able to make more educated guesses as to why.
Scientists thought megalodon’s extinction was linked to a supernova that occurred around
the same time.
That’s probably what killed off some other large marine creatures, most likely by triggering
changes to the Earth’s climate.
But if megalodon actually died out a million
years earlier, it couldn’t be that.
So the researchers think it’s smaller kin—
great white sharks—are actually to blame.
Though they first appeared roughly 5-6 million
years ago, around 3.6 million years ago, they
were becoming a lot more common and widespread.
The idea is that great white sharks may have out-competed juvenile megalodons for food,
since they were a similar size.
So although megalodon may live on in our movie theaters, it’s definitely extinct, probably
for longer than we thought, and maybe because of sharks still around today.
Though…those sharks may not continue to dominate coastal environments much longer.
It used to be that if you wanted to see great whites, you went to the waters around Seal
Island off the coast of South Africa.
That’s where people filmed those Air Jaws videos of great white sharks flying out of
the water in their pursuit of seals.
But since 2015, they’ve become harder and harder to spot.
In 2017 and 2018, great white sharks disappeared from regular scientific surveys for weeks,
even months at a time.
Where all the great whites went and why they’re gone is unclear.
But a new predator has moved in in their absence.
According to a paper published last week in Scientific Reports, off the coast of South
Africa sevengill sharks are now top dog… oh, top shark!
Sevengill sharks are named, obviously, for the number of gill slits they have, which
is higher than the 5 found in most other sharks.
And they don’t /look/ like top predator material.
Though they can be over 2 meters long, they have a sort of goofiness to them, with their
rounded features, that makes them seem sluggish and non-threatening.
And their comb-like teeth just don’t inspire the same heart-stopping terror as the jagged
blades in great white mouths.
But the animals are known to feed on marine mammals as well as other sharks, rays, and
bony fish.
And the researchers have recently seen them taking out seals in South Africa when the
seals’ usual predators are nowhere to be seen.
The team has been monitoring shark activity in the waters surrounding seal island since
2000 using surface baits, and for about 18 years, they’d never seen a sevengill shark.
But when the great white sharks began to disappear, the sevengills started showing up.
It doesn’t seem like the sevengills are outcompeting the great white sharks.
In their surveys, they saw an inverse relationship between great whites and sevengills—which
may be because, well, white sharks are one of the only animals that can take out an adult
sevengill shark.
Most of the time, sevengills stayed about 18 kilometers away in an area with a lot of
kelp that the white sharks seemed to avoid, perhaps because they’re less able to slip
through the seaweed without getting wrapped up.
So instead, the decline in white sharks seems to be allowing the sevengills to step in.
And no one’s sure why the great whites disappeared in the first place—or whether they can bounce
back.
For now, the researchers plan to continue their monitoring and see if they can determine
where and why the great whites have gone.
That might suggest ways to bring them back—or, if that’s even possible.
But If the sevengills are here to stay, the researchers are in a prime position to document
if and how this change in top predator alters ecosystem dynamics.
So they’ll learn more about shark ecology and their effects on other species—one way
or another.
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