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LOS ANGELES — Megalodon , the most massive shark ever to lurch the ocean , may have gotten so large that it was prostrate to experimental extinction .
For some mysterious reason , though the biggest and smallest appendage of the species were the same length , many of the giantsea monstersgot longer over a 14 - million - class period , and then , they all went extinct , new inquiry suggests ..
A megalodon shark.
Although it ’s not cleared why the behemoths were getting braggy over evolutionary time , their big size may have made them more vulnerable to extinction , said study co - author Catalina Pimiento , a biota doctoral campaigner at the University of Florida and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama . She presented her findings here at the 73rd annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting . [ Image Gallery : Ancient Monsters of the Sea ]
crowing is better ?
Megalodon could develop up to 60 feet ( 18 meters ) long and had abite more herculean than that of aTyrannosaurus rex . The sea monsters terrorized the sea from about 16 million to 2 million years ago . Though that may seem like a long reign , other shark species have subsist for 50 million yr or more without significant changes in torso plan , Pimiento say .
A great white shark compared with the much larger megalodon, and a hapless hypothetical human.
" This species is not as successful as we think , " Pimiento said . " A lot of shark that were alert during the metre of Megalodon are still around today . "
Megalodon ’s short chronicle made Pimiento necessitate whether the shark ’s body size of it affected its evolutionary success .
" trunk size touch on nigh every aspect of an organism ’s biological science and ecology , " Pimiento secern LiveScience . " When you have a very large being like Megalodon , that can be very good or very high-risk . "
Megalodon teeth from around the world.
braggart animal can deplete a wider range of foods and be fiercer predators than their pip - squeak pals . But because they feed more type of animals they also have more competition for those animals , and the ecosystem can support a lower population density of them since they need more resources — including space — to survive . When nutrient supplies dwindle away , these giant tool could have had a tough time find enough nutrient , Pimiento said .
Bigger over time
Pimiento went to several museums around the humans and quantify the tooth sizing of about 400 specimen ofMegalodon . base on those mensuration , she gauge their last body size before extinction .
She concluded that while the sizing of the biggest and smallest of the animals did n’t change over time , there were more of the bigger fauna during the belated periods of its phylogeny .
It ’s still not clear exactly why the titan bring forth full-grown , but Pimiento plans to look at climate datum and info on other metal money to tease that out .
" Perhaps something was going on with the productivity and mood that produced that pattern , or with their target and their competitors that made the species become heavy , " Pimiento said .
Either direction , being so huge may have made them more vulnerable to quenching . Though the mega - sharks exit off , their close relatives — great ashen sharks — still terrorize the ocean today .
" The potential body size step-up in the megalodon lineage over geologic time will need to be tested further by examine megalodon collections throughout the reality , but the idea is important to infer the emanation and extermination of the top predatory animal lineage that must have had a significant encroachment to the ocean ecology , " said Kenshu Shimada , a paleobiologist at DePaul University in Chicago , who was not involve in the bailiwick .
