Normally, divers, beachgoers, and anglers come throughout tooth from these extinct marine superpredators. This time, a robotic shovel scooped one off the ocean ground
Megalodon tooth dwarf nice white shark tooth. Mark Kositch / Adobe Inventory
Ask any marine fanatic about probably the most terrifying ocean predator of all time, and so they received’t speak about an important white shark. As an alternative, they’ll most likely title the nice white’s historic competitor, megalodon. In the event you’re unfamiliar, Otodus megalodon is an extinct shark species that made nice whites appear to be piranhas. They died out over 3 million years in the past, however folks nonetheless often discover their tooth, which are sometimes the scale of the hand that picks them up.
Researchers published a study in Historical Biology on Dec. 14 documenting the first-ever “in situ” megalodon tooth discovery from a beforehand unexplored location within the Pacific Ocean. The June 2022 discovery concerned a group of deep-sea researchers with the Ocean Exploration Belief who have been gathering samples from across the Johnson Atoll, which lies in the midst of the South Pacific west of Hawaii.
After reaching the distant reef of their exploration vessel Nautilus, they used a remotely operated car named Hercules to shovel rocks and sediment from the ocean ground over 10,000 ft under the floor. When scientists on the College of Rhode Island later inspected the samples, they discovered a collection of uniform serrated edges below the outer crust of one of many rocks. The rock turned out to be 3.5-million-year-old fossilized megalodon tooth that researchers estimate would have measured virtually 4 inches lengthy and three inches extensive earlier than all these millennia underwater took their toll.
Regardless of being virtually wholly encrusted in an alloy of iron and manganese, because the article factors out, the tooth’s lengthy lifespan was uneventful.
“The well-preserved serration of the reducing edges means that the tooth didn’t bear massive transportation or drifting from which abrasion of the reducing edges could be anticipated,” the article reads. “Publicity of the leading edge signifies that the sampling location didn’t accumulate overlying sediment, regardless of a minimal age of the fossil tooth of three.5 million years of age.”
In layman’s phrases, the tooth was principally stationary throughout all that point, because the serrated edges are nonetheless so outlined. If the tooth had rolled round on the ocean ground or been in a extra turbulent spot the place sediment kicked up extra ceaselessly, it may not have been in such fine condition. And for some reference on simply how lengthy 3.5 million years truly is, fashionable people didn’t evolve till 90 % of that timespan had come and gone.
That is regarded as the primary time a megalodon tooth was collected from its authentic resting spot, which is what “in situ discovery” means. A lot of the different discoveries occurred on seashores at low tide, on fishing boats, or on dives, all in spots the place tooth have been doubtless deposited after being picked up and moved by a present or some disruptive underwater occasion. Discovering a needle in a haystack could be simpler to duplicate than what the Nautilus workers pulled off.
“That is a tremendous discover and is attention-grabbing in a number of facets,” Nicolas Straube, an affiliate professor on the College Museum Bergen in Norway and co-author of the research, says in a press launch. “The fossil was found at a really distant deep-sea locality from which megalodon fossils are not often documented.”
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Whereas a lot about megalodon stays unknown, scientists hypothesize they dominated the world’s oceans from 3.5 million years in the past to twenty million years in the past. They doubtless grew as much as 60 ft lengthy, or thrice the scale of the immediately’s greatest nice white sharks. Positive, that’s somewhat shorter than how they’re depicted within the 2023 field workplace smash hit Megalodon: The Frenzy. However if you happen to got here face-to-face with one within the deep ocean, 60 ft or 600 ft wouldn’t make a lot of a distinction in your odds of survival.
