About 15 million years ago in a warm coastal sea, the ocean surface suddenly erupted in a violent upheaval as a shark the size of a five-story building launched itself at a whale. The force of the attack bent the whale's back and caused it to break.
That's the scenario proposed by scientists who recently examined two of the whale's fractured vertebrae and one megalodon tooth, which were found close together in Maryland. The researchers describe the whale's injuries in a new study.
The lead author of the study said that they only have circumstantial evidence. The story is unfolding in this way. We want the evidence to speak for itself even though there are limitations to what we can say.
Mike Ellwood, a volunteer and fossil collector, discovered the bones of a whale that was probably 13 feet in length. It wasn't possible to tell if the specimen was a toothed whale, a baleen whale or a large dolphin, but it was fascinating to see.
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"In terms of the fossils we've seen, this type of injury is extremely rare," he said. I wanted to know the history of the injury because it was so bad.
What was the best snack for megalodon? The sperm whale is facing the camera.
A local hospital offered to help assess the fossil with modern medical techniques if he looked inside the damaged vertebrae with aCT scans. The scans showed a textbook compression fracture, a type of break in which vertebrae collapse and fall, that was so distinct in its pattern as to be immediately recognizable.
The pathology would be recognized by any radiologist who looked at it.
The scientists found that the periosteum produced new bone after the injury. Regardless of whether the periosteal bone formed to repair the wound, as it often does in humans, or as the result of an infection or arthritis, the growth of new bone post injury suggests that the whale lived for several weeks.
Other factors could have caused the whale's vertebrae to break millions of years ago. The false mako shark is an example of a marine megafauna other than a megalodon. According to the study authors, it's possible that the whale broke its own back by convulsing after eating toxicalgae.
The most likely explanation is a megalodon attack. One vertebra was telescoped inward from the force of the other vertebra smashing into it. It's hard to imagine a seizure or convulsion packing such a punch, because it's so over the top.
There is a megalodon tooth next to the spine. It was found that the tooth's tip broke off after hitting something. It is tempting to reconstruct a scene in which the apex predator of the day blunted a whale carcass or lost its tooth while swimming over it.
"We don't know predatory techniques that megalodon could have used, but it's possible that they ambush their prey from below." He explained that the megalodon could have easily flexed the whale's back against gravity to cause the injuries.
The alternative explanations aren't ruled out. The paper covers a wide range of conditions that could have caused the damage. These are incredible stories. We can tell the initial story, but it's not clear if that's the best explanation.
It was originally published on Live Science
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