For millions of years, megalodon sharks were top ocean predators — and then came the great whites. New analyses of shark teeth hint that competition for food from great white sharks may have helped give the megatoothed giants an extra shove toward extinction.
Scientists reconstructed shark feeding habits by analyzing zinc in the teeth of 20 living shark species and 13 extinct species, including megalodons (Otodus megalodon). Megalodons and great whites occupied a similar ecological niche, devouring marine mammals such as whales and seals, the researchers report May 31 in Nature Communications.
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