Scientists have suggested that with the beginning of the ice age, small whales that made up the diet of giant sharks gradually became extinct, and larger species - for example, the ancestors of modern baleen whales, which only benefited from a cold snap, were too tough for megalodons.
Megalodons (Carcharocles megalodon) were the largest fish ever to sail the ocean. The oldest found remains of these giant sharks are 66 million years old, and they became extinct about 2.6 million years ago. The body length of the largest individuals was up to 16 meters, and the strength and span of the jaws, according to scientists, would allow the megalodon to eat a car. However, they did not become the largest inhabitants of the seas: modern blue whales grow up to 33 meters, which is twice the size of the largest megalodon.
Having carefully studied the chips and scratches on the bones of marine mammals - contemporaries of the megalodons, paleontologists from Belgium, Italy and Peru came to the conclusion that the Paleogene terminator of the seas fed mainly on small whales and other marine mammals. The jagged teeth of the megalodons have jagged the bones of Piscobalaena nana, an extinct cetacean less than 5 meters long. Megalodon tooth marks were also found on the remains of Piscophoca pacifica, a small pinniped fossil.
Megalodon jaw
The authors of the study, published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, stipulate that their data are insufficient to compile an exhaustive description of the megalodon diet. But if the monsters did eat small marine animals, their food preferences could explain their extinction as well.
Scientists explain their hypothesis as follows: the approach of the ice age forced the sea to retreat - part of the water froze in the glaciers of the north and south poles. Along with the outlines of the continents, the ecosystems of coastal waters have also changed, where small whales flourished in the interval between global glaciers - the favorite food of megalodons. However, these changes hardly affected the large whales, which preferred the open ocean.
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Along with the drop in global temperatures, the migration paths of plankton changed, and again fate turned out to be favorable to large marine mammals - the ancestors of modern humpback and blue whales, which, due to their size and rapid metabolism, could make long sea transitions in search of food. For the megalodon, this meant that all the prey went far into the open ocean. Cold-blooded, slow sharks did not find food in the usual warm waters, and could not migrate into cold waters. Former masters of the ocean could only pick up carrion and wait for the end, the authors of the study suggest.
Other studies attribute the extinction of megalodons to competition with the karcharodons - modern white sharks.
