Prehistoric mega-shark

Paris: The largest sharks ever to have roamed the oceans parked their young in shallow, warm-water nurseries where food was abundant and predators scarce until they could assume their title as kings and queens of the sea.

But as sea levels declined in a cooling world, the brutal mega-predator, Otodus megalodons, may have found fewer and fewer safe-haven coastal zones where its young could safely reach adulthood, researchers reported Wednesday in The Royal Society journal Biology Letters. Indeed, the reliance of Megalodon on nurseries may have contributed to the end of their 20-million-year reign, according to the research.