A ravenous shark — possibly a megalodon (Otodus megalodon), the largest shark that ever lived — sunk its teeth into a baleen whale up to 15 million years ago in what is now Maryland, according to a new study of the whale's flipper bone.
However, the whale was probably already dead and floating at the water's surface, an analysis of the bite marks on its radius, or flipper bone, indicated. So megalodon or some other giant shark was likely scavenging the blubbery beast, biting into the whale's flipper and thrashing its head back and forth to tear off its meal.
"These bite-shake traces consisting of shallow, thin arching gouges on the radius likely indicate scavenging rather than active predation," study lead researcher Stephen Godfrey, curator of paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, told Live Science in an email.
