It was 16 meters long and weighed more than 61 tons. It needed over 98,000 kilo calories every day and had a stomach volume of over 10,000 liters. The results show that the megalodon could eat whole prey up to 8 meters in length. This is the size of a killer whale. The ability to eat large apex predators of comparable size millions of years ago puts megalodon at a higher trophic level than modern top predators.
The spine is well-preserved and can be reconstructed.
The findings of an international study were published in the journal Science Advances. Thanks to 3D modeling, the research was possible. After the creature died in the ocean of Belgium at the age of 46 about 18 million years ago, a large portion of its column was left behind in the fossil record.
Jack Cooper is the first author of a book about shark teeth. They don't fossilize because their skeletons are made of cartilaginous. It's a one-of-a-kind fossil that's from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science.
The body mass goes from single vertebra to whole body mass.
The research team, which includes researchers from Switzerland, U.K., U.S., Australia and South Africa, first measured and scanned the whole column. The column was attached to a 3D Scan of a megalodon's Dentition. They used a 3D- Scan of the great white shark's body to create a model.
One of the most important characteristics of an animal is weight. According to co-author John Hutchinson, a professor at the Royal Veterinary College in the U.K., modern 3D digital modeling methods can be used to estimate the body mass of extinct animals.
A predator in the ocean.
The high energetic demand would have been met by feeding on whales' blubber, which contains calories. A model of potential megalodon prey encounters found that eating a single 8-meter-long whale may have allowed the shark to swim thousands of miles without eating again for two months.
The results suggest that the giant shark was a trans-oceanic super- apex predator. The extinction of the giant shark is believed to have had an impact on global transport and the release of large cetaceans.
Future reconstructions and further research can be done using the complete model. The novel biological inferences drawn from this study represent a leap in our knowledge of this singular super predator and helps to better understand the ecological function that megafaunal species play.
More information: Jack A. Cooper et al, The extinct shark Otodus megalodon was a transoceanic superpredator: Inferences from 3D modeling, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm9424. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm9424 Journal information: Science Advances
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