Megalodon and Other Extinct Giant Sharks Started Life in Nurseries
upstart writes:
The largest sharks ever seem to have left their young in an unsupervised daycare:
Gigantic extinct sharks have something to tell us from millions of years ago, and paleontologists are only just beginning to unravel that message. In a series of firsts, paleontologists have identified a growing number of paleo-nurseries, ancient sanctuaries where young sharks may have been born and where they grew until they were big enough to survive on their own in the larger sea. It's a strategy some sharks continue to employ today, meaning it has been a successful evolutionary tactic for at least 23 million years.
The most abundant remnants we have of these apex predators are the teeth they shed over their lifetime. Cartilage, the major component of internal shark structure, doesn't tend to survive fossilization. [...]
Despite the effort required, the work is being done. The first known megalodon paleo-nursery was found in Panama and described in a paper published in 2010. Megalodon (Otodus megalodon) tends to be the only terrifying, toothy leviathan in our collective imagination when it comes to extinct sharks. But there were a number of enormous ancient shark species over the past million years, all of which are known as megatoothed sharks. Since that discovery 12 years ago, more paleo-nurseries from other megatoothed sharks have been found throughout the world in countries like Peru, Chile, Spain, and the East Coast of the US. In 2020, the first paleo-nursery for ancient great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) was discovered in Chile. And in 2021, the first paleo-nursery for another megatoothed species, Carcharocles angustidens, was confirmed in South Carolina.
[...] The idea that a large number of fossilized teeth represents the presence of a large number of sharks is, according to Gibson and co-author Dr. Robert Boessenecker of the Carcharocles angustidens paleo-nursery paper, partly an assumption.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.