Scientists studying a whale fin bone found a bite make that is likely left by a giant shark or perhaps a megalodon. They estimated that the whale they found in Maryland may have lived 15 million years ago.
An analysis of the chunk marks showed that the whale was probably already dead when the giant shark took a bite to the whale's fins. The shark may have been scavenging the blubber of the beast by biting its flipper and thrashing its head backward and forwards to tear off the meat.
Megalodon pursuing two Eobalaenoptera whales.
Whale Flipper Bone Found in Maryland
In an email to Live Science by Stephen Godfrey, a curator of paleontology and senior researcher at the Calvert Maritime Museum, he said that an eroded fossil of a Miocene era whale was found in Maryland.
William (Douggie) Douglass, a fossil collector in Maryland, was the one who found the whalebone on the seashore close to the naturally eroding Calvert Cliffs. It is an area known for its extraordinary marine fossils from the Miocene period, an era when the Atlantic Ocean would intermittently flood the Chesapeake space in Maryland.
Douglass said that he would typically sell the fossils he would find alongside the facet of the freeway. However, he decided not to sell this whalebone and instead gave it to the Calvert Marine Museum.
The flipper bone measures about 11 inches (27.5 centimeters) with a flattened shape and slightly curved form that indicates it is from a baleen whale or a filter-feeding whale.
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Shark Bite Traces Found in the Whale Flipper Bone
Godfrey said that Douglass decided to give the fossil to them because he noticed some shark bite traces on either side of the bone. Douglass suspects that Godfrey and other scientists might be curious about this uncommon discovery.
In the email he wrote, he said that the shark would have clenched firmly on the flipper bone to easily take the flesh away. After taking off the meat, it re-bit the flipper to take away another flesh.
But the analysis showed that the whale have already died and was floating on the ocean before the giant shark attacked and bit the whale's flesh. Godfrey explains that whales typically float on the ocean floor because of the gases that have built up inside their belly due to the decomposition process.
The scavenging shark would then have fed on the water's floor but occasionally lifted its head out of the ocean so the whale's flipper might have been the easiest and simplest target for them. Scientists have identified the whale as a Linichnus bromleyi, but they are still uncertain what kind of giant shark bit the whale.
But Godfrey said it could be a Carcharodon hastalis, which is the ancestor of the modern great white shark. Their full findings are published in their paper, titled "The Ichnospecies Linichnus bromleyi on a Miocene Baleen Whale Radius Preserving Multiple Shark Bite-shake Traces Suggests Scavenging," in the journal Carnets Geol.
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