Megalodon Diets, Teeth Sensitivity and a Bunch of Vaccine News
It’s one step forward and two steps back for vaccine policy in the U.S. Plus, we discuss the fishy origins of sensitive teeth and megalodon diets.
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! It may technically still be spring, but with Memorial Day firmly in the rearview mirror and June upon us, let’s be real: it’s spiritually summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and we hope you’re enjoying it. For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the month with a quick roundup of some recent science news you may have missed.
First, a measles update: the good news is that the massive outbreak we’ve been following for the last few months in Texas seems to be slowing down, though it certainly isn’t over. While cases in the West Texas–centered outbreak appeared to be leveling off last week, there have been other concerning incidents of recent measles exposure around the U.S. In mid-May, someone attended a Shakira concert at MetLife Stadium while contagious. Also in mid-May, a traveler with measles flew through the Denver airport. Meanwhile, Canada and Mexico are both dealing with measles outbreaks of their own. A public health doctor told the CBC that Ontario is now reporting more measles cases every week than it previously saw in a decade.
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Speaking of vaccines: Last Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer recommend COVID vaccines for children or pregnant people without underlying health conditions. This could impact whether insurance companies will pay for COVID vaccines, making it harder for people who want the jab to get it.
In less troubling vaccine news, officials in England and Wales recently announced the world’s first rollouts of a gonorrhea vaccine. The shot, called 4CMenB, isn’t new; it’s used in a number of countries globally to prevent meningococcal disease in infants, children and other high-risk groups. Because the bacteria that causes meningococcal disease is closely related to the one that causes gonorrhea, the proteins in the shot also provide some protection against the STI. Studies suggest the vaccine is roughly 30 to 40 percent effective against gonorrhea. That might not sound like a huge deal, but given the rise of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, experts say the jab could have a big impact.
Now we’ll slide from health news to animal news with a study that’s right smack dab in the middle. According to the authors of a recent Nature paper, if you have sensitive teeth you might be able to blame an ancient armored fish—which you were probably already doing, right?
The research suggests that dentin, the layer of material just beneath the enamel of our teeth that encases the soft dental pulp, first evolved in fish exoskeletons hundreds of millions of years ago. Back then, dentin was contained in bumps along the tough, bony skin of armored fish. Just like modern invertebrates with exoskeletons, these fish would have needed some sensitivity in their shell-like outer layer so they could pick up information about the waters they swam through such as temperature and pressure. So it’s possible the unpleasant zap of pain you might sometimes feel while drinking ice water is an evolutionary holdover from a time when sensitive dentin helped fish navigate the world.
In other toothy animal news a study published last Monday in Earth and Planetary Science Letters attempts to puzzle out the dietary habits of the long-extinct megalodon. These sharks, which have reached near-mythical status thanks to the hard work of Jason Statham, may have grown up to about 80 feet [24.3 meters] long, with teeth that could reach roughly seven inches [18 centimeters]. One 2022 study estimated that megalodons would have needed to consume more than 98,000 kilocalories a day to sustain themselves. That certainly suggests the sharks ate some massive sea creatures during the almost 20-million-year period when they dominated the ocean, and this new study doesn’t dispute that—scientists have the massive fossilized bite marks to prove it.
But a close look at the zinc content of megalodon teeth suggests that the predators weren’t too picky about the place their meals occupied on the food chain. This paints a picture of an opportunistic carnivore that often munched on relatively small critters and that probably had lots of overlap with other, smaller predators. One of the researchers told CNN that the study supports the theory that the megalodon’s eventual competition for food with the sleeker, likely more nimble great white may have contributed to the prehistoric creature’s extinction.
That’s all for this week’s science news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday with a look inside a shocking investigation about the Dakota Access Pipeline.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
Rachel Feltman is former executive editor of Popular Science and forever host of the podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. She previously founded the blog Speaking of Science for the Washington Post.
Fonda Mwangi is a multimedia editor at Scientific American. She previously worked as an audio producer at Axios, The Recount and WTOP News. She holds a master’s degree in journalism and public affairs from American University in Washington, D.C.
Alex Sugiura is a Peabody and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, editor and podcast producer based in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has worked on projects for Bloomberg, Axios, Crooked Media and Spotify, among others.
Source: www.scientificamerican.com