Megalodon was probably the apex predator among apex predators
Megalodon was a fearsome predator - there is no doubt about that. But its position in the food chain was probably even more imposing than thought.
As long as a bus, weighing tons and with teeth the size of a palm: the megalodon was a shark of superlatives. And it may have occupied a top position in marine food webs unlike any other ocean predator since. That's what a paper by Emma Kas of Princeton University and her team in Science Advances suggests. During the lifetime of the giant shark during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, the food chain may therefore have been somewhat longer than it is today.
For their study, Kas and her team relied on a new technique that analyzes food chains based on the ratio of nitrogen isotopes in organic molecules from tooth enamel. This corresponds to the corresponding nitrogen levels from tooth collagen, which is used in today's sharks to determine their position in the food chain. The higher an animal ranks there, the greater the ratio of nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14, as they consume more nitrogen-15 in their diet.
In the case of the megalodon, the team determined significantly higher nitrogen-15 levels than in great white sharks, polar bears or killer whales. It concludes that the megalodon preyed on even more carnivores than other top predators of the oceans, living or extinct - at least all those known so far. It is known that the shark preyed on minke whales, and other sharks have also fallen prey to it.
However, scientists detected a wide range of nitrogen-15 content in the megalodon's teeth: So not every conspecific reached the top of the food chain. In any case, this position could not prevent extinction. Climate changes at the end of the Pliocene and the emergence of the agile white sharks ensured that the species disappeared 2.6 million years ago.
Spectrum of Science
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Originalartikel auf Spektrum.deTitelbild: Shutterstock / Large Megalodon Gemination vs Great White Shark Tooth
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