The predator’s ultimate predator was a 50-foot-long giant shark that was powerful enough to eat even other predators.
Of course, we are talking about prehistoric megacock sharks, which have teeth larger than human hands.
This includes the largest shark in history, the mighty megalodon, and several related species.
Megalodon is a conservative estimate of 15 meters (50 feet), but the top length of modern great white sharks is usually about 5 meters or 15 feet.
Some shark species existed long before the dinosaurs (over 400 million years ago), but these giant sharks evolved after the dinosaurs went extinct and ruled the ocean just 3 million years ago.
However, based on new research from sharp data during the lockout, scientists at Princeton University were able to come up with a classification of earlier predators.
They showed that prehistoric giant insecticidal sharks are the most predatory beak of all and can defy human interaction with the ocean.
EmmaCast, PhD in Earth Sciences 2019, is the first author of a new study in the latest issue of Science Advances, which states:
But Megalodon and other Megasid sharks are true giant predators that ate other predators, and Maggie went extinct only millions of years ago.
“If Megalodon exists in the modern ocean, it will radically change human interactions with the marine environment,” said Danny Sigman, professor of geology and geophysics at Princeton.
The Princeton group of researchers found clear evidence that Megalodon and some of its ancestors were at the highest levels of the prehistoric food chain. This is what scientists call the highest “nutritional stage.”
In fact, their nutritional marks are so high that other predators and predatory predators have to eat in difficult bait webs, the researchers say.
“The food chain of the sea is longer than the terrestrial food chain of wolf, deer and grass, because you start with such small creatures,” said the cast, now at the University of Cambridge.
To draw conclusions about the prehistoric marine food web, Cast, Sigman and their colleagues used new techniques to measure nitrogen isotopes in shark teeth.
Ecologists have long known that the higher the nitrogen-15 in the body, the higher the nutritional levels, but scientists measure small amounts of nitrogen accumulated in the enamel layer of the teeth of these extinct predators. I couldn’t do it.
Zixuan (Crystal) Rao, a Sigman Research Group graduate and co-author of an ongoing paper, said: ..
Without a time machine, the team would have no easy way to recreate a food web for extinct creatures.
Fortunately, Sigman and his team have spent decades developing other methods. Based on this, he reveals whether an organism’s intracellular nitrogen isotope levels are at the top, middle, or bottom of the food chain.
“My research team’s goal is to search for chemically pure but physically protected organic compounds, including nitrogen, in the distant geological past,” Sigman said.
Some plants, algae, and other species at the bottom of the food web have acquired the ability to convert nitrogen from the air or water into their tissues. The organisms that eat them take this nitrogen into their bodies and, more importantly, excrete (sometimes in the urine) the nitrogen isotope N-14, which is lighter than its heavier cousin N-15…
In other words, moving up the food chain causes N-15 to accumulate compared to N-14.
Other researchers have used this approach on creatures these days (most recently 10,000 to 15,000 years ago), but older animals didn’t have enough nitrogen to make measurements.
The reason is that soft tissues such as muscles and skin are poorly protected. To make matters worse, sharks have no bones and their skeleton is made of cartilage.
But the shark has a golden ticket in the fossil record: teeth. Teeth are easier to maintain than bones because they are embedded in enamel, a rocky material that is largely unaffected by most bacteria’s breakdown.
“Because teeth are designed to be chemically and physically resistant, they survive in a highly chemically reactive environment in the mouth and break down foods that may contain solids. You can,” Sigman explained.
Also, sharks are not limited to the 30 pearly whites that we humans have. They constantly grow and lose teeth (modern small-toothed sand tigers lose teeth on average for decades every day), which means that each shark produces thousands of teeth throughout its life.
Sigman continues. “Looking at the geological record, one of the most common fossil species is shark teeth, and there’s a small amount of organic matter in the teeth that was used to make tooth enamel, and now it’s packed into the enamel.
Because shark teeth are so abundant and well preserved, the nitrogen characteristics of the enamel allow us to gauge the condition of the food web that fell from the shark’s mouth millions of years ago or yesterday.
Even the largest teeth have only a thin film of enamel, and their nitrogen content is negligible. However, Sigman’s team is developing more advanced techniques to extract and measure the ratios of these nitrogen isotopes, dental drills, cleaning agents, and eventually enamel nitrogen to nitrous oxide, now possible without the aid of conversion. of microorganisms. Accurately measure the N15-N14 ratio of these old teeth.
“We’re a bit like a brewery,” he said. “We grow microorganisms and give them samples. They produce nitric oxide for us and then analyze the nitrous oxide they produce.
At the start of the pandemic, Caste was browsing ecological literature for nitrogen isotope measurements in modern marine animals while his friends were cooking and eating Netflix.
Michael Griffiths, a paleoclimatologist and geochemist at William Paterson University, said: Co-author of the paper.
When the cast was quarantined at home, they consistently set records with more than 20,000 marine mammals and more than 5,000 sharks. He wants to go further.
“Our device has the potential to unravel ancient food webs. Now we need a sample,” Cast said.
From forums near the bottom of the food chain to the teeth of different types of fish (bones of the inner ear), we are happy to find museums and other archives with images of the ecosystem. In addition to the teeth of marine mammals, to the teeth of sharks.
The same nitrogen isotope analysis can be done to get a complete picture of the ancient ecosystem.
In addition to searching the literature, his database contains specimens of his own shark teeth.
Co-author Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University connected the aquarium to the museum, and Martin Becker of William Paterson University and Harry Meish of Florida Gulf University collected specimens of megacilin on the ocean floor.
This is really dangerous. “Harry is a master diver and you really have to be an expert to get them,” Griffith said.
“You can find little shark teeth on the beach, but to get the best-preserved specimens, you have to go to the bottom of the ocean. Marty and Harry gritted their teeth everywhere.”
He added: “Collecting samples and putting everything together was a true collaborative effort. In general, working with universities in Princeton and other regions is really exciting because the students are great and they are there with my colleagues. They were great to work with.
Source: Metro
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