Jaws beats the Meg: Megalodon may have gone extinct because of great white sharks
Yes, yes, we know, the film Jaws is better than The Meg, but this isn’t about two shark films based on best-selling books, this is the real deal. This is about when the great white shark swam beside the megalodon, and won.
There was a time when the giant megalodon and great white existed in the same seas, and shared the same prey, but it is now thought the oceans weren't big enough for the both of them.
Whaaaat? That's right, they were gonna need a bigger food source. Possibly.
On paper, the megalodon had it made. It was the largest fish that ever lived, but the new kid on the block, the great white shark, which was some four times smaller, got that beat as it is thought they often shared the same prey.
Not that was the sole reason the giant prehistoric shark made famous by the Jason Statham movie vanished, it would have to contend with climate change, but competing with another apex predator for the same food sources won’t have helped its position as top fish.
Researchers came to this Carcharodon carcharias as victor conclusion after their study used a new technique to look at the dietary signatures in the zinc contained in the teeth of extinct sharks and modern shark species. This enabled them to figure out where the sharks sat on the food chain, and that the once mighty fish may have been out manoeuvred by the great white when hunting prey.
The South China Morning Post quoted paleobiologist Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University in Chicago, a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
He said: "The megalodon co-existed with the great white shark during the time frame called the early Pliocene, and our zinc data suggest that they seem to have indeed occupied the same position in the food chain.
"There have been multiple hypotheses as to why megalodon went extinct. Traditional hypotheses have attributed this to climate change and the decline in food sources. However, a recently proposed hypothesis contends that megalodon lost the competition with the newly evolved great white shark. Our new study appears to support this proposition. It is also entirely possible that a combination of multiple factors may have been at play.”
However, the megalodon’s sudden disappearance from the sea and in the fossil records remain something of a mystery.
Clearly, they need to go and have a look in that Mariana Trench. I want to be sure; you want to be sure; we all want to be sure.
Meanwhile, on cinema screens at least, the great white sharks from the Jaws series may have dominated the 1970s and 1980s, but in box office terms it is now the megalodon that swims up and down the cinema aisles of success, first with The Meg in 2018, and now with The Meg 2 swimming our way in 2023.
There have still been great white shark films still released, such as Great White, Blood In The Water, Shark Bait and the forthcoming The Reef 2, but most of these have been a limited theatrical release, gone straight to DVD or video on demand.
How the tide has turned in favour of the megalodon, which is now the apex shark when it comes devouring money at the box office. Although, you’ll all be pleased to hear that – when adjusted for inflation – no one can touch the box office bite radius of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
Words by Dean Newman
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