ANIMALS
Great white sharks may have driven megalodon to extinction
WORDS CAMERON DUKE
Great white sharks coexisted alongside megalodon before rising to take the bigger shark’s place at the top of the ocean food chain
Megalodon (Otodus megalodon), one of the largest sharks to have ever lived, mysteriously vanished from the fossil record about 3.6 million years ago. Now scientists suspect that the massive predator may have been driven to extinction by a rival marine species: great white sharks. Prior research hypothesised that megalodon’s decline may have coincided with the rise of great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias), which likely hunted the same prey as their larger cousin.