The great white shark takes over
A faster, warm-blooded shark replaces the giant that preceded it.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.9 million years
- Known to
- ± 500 thousand years
- Era
- Pliocene, Cenozoic
Carcharodon carcharias emerges as a distinct lineage in the Pliocene, and unlike megalodon it is partly endothermic, able to keep its muscles, gut and brain warmer than the surrounding water. That allows it to hunt in cold, productive seas where megalodon could not follow, and to be considerably faster. As the oceans cool and marine mammal prey shifts poleward, the advantage compounds. It is a clean case of a smaller, more thermally flexible predator outlasting a larger specialist.