Why the biggest sharks in history died out

The largest shark in the history of the Earth - megalodon - could grow up to 18 meters and ruled the oceans of the planet for more than 20 million years. The huge monster was invincible in its element and could eat, in general, everything that came across to it. So why did megalodon die out about 2.6 million years ago? Oddly enough, it was not influenced by climatic changes, which were enough in those days (they didn’t affect the giant shark), not by more powerful predators (because there simply didn’t exist), but by a decrease in diet and smaller competitors.

Than not a dragon

Megalodons were so huge that at first their teeth, which were found in different places, were mistaken for the petrified tongues of snakes and dragons. To learn in these terrible murder instruments, the largest of which reached 19 cm, shark teeth were first managed in the 17th century by Danish naturalist Niels Stensen.

A hundred years later, a scientist from Switzerland, Jean Louis Agassis, gave the giant prehistoric shark its scientific name - Carcharodon megalodon, identifying it due to the similarity of teeth in one genus with a large white shark.

Traces of teeth of megalodons on the bones of his victims indicate that these sharks fed on rather large animals: cetaceans, pinnipeds and large fish. The bite force of the largest megalodons probably reached 10.8 tons.

Competition with the "kids"

In general, before scientists were sure that megalodon, the largest predator at the top of the ocean’s food chain in history, became extinct due to climatic changes. However, a recent study of the remains of two hundred megalodons discovered around the world showed that the population of these giants did not decrease when the temperature of the oceans became lower, and did not increase significantly when the water was warm.

Another version, which has more and more evidence, says that the disappearance of megalodons was influenced by a reduction in food, primarily various species of large cetaceans, which the giant sharks enjoyed with pleasure. In addition, smaller predators appeared to cause problems for megalodons: the ancestors of modern killer whales and large white sharks. Since they were relatively small, they could easily eat medium-sized food, which was one clove for a giant megalodon weighing up to 46 tons.