• Question: Why did super predators in the past e.g dunkleosteus die out eventually

    Asked by leonard004 to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 19 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Sam Tazzyman

      Sam Tazzyman answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Wow – I didn’t even know about Dunkleosteus and I’ve just looked it up on wikipedia. It looks really cool!

      I’m afraid I don’t know how it died out, but don’t forget that large top predators like it are often quite vulnerable because they need lots of food. A modern example (albeit a land mammal) is the polar bear – it’s a huge predator but it is very threatened because of climate change. Over time environments often change, and if something cannot evolve fast enough to keep up, it goes extinct.

    • Photo: Ed Morrison

      Ed Morrison answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      I’d never heard of it either, but after looking it up I don’t think i would have liked to meet one.

      99% of species that have ever lived are extinct so it’s not a surprise that this chap is too. Most species go extinct because of something like an asteroid hitting earth (e.g. the dinosaurs), climate change, habitat destruction, or because the food they eat itself goes extinct.

    • Photo: Steven Daly

      Steven Daly answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      That makes me glad I do not swim much, extinct or not.

      As has been said below there are a lot of reasons a large predator can go extinct. There would likely have been a relatively small population, which makes an animal vulnerable to a sudden change in environment. If the change is too severe they cannot adapt fast enough and die out. It is also possible it was caught in one of the mass extinction episodes the Earth has known. In this the majority of species die out, usually due to massive changes to the climate due to some kind of natural disaster ( e.g. a comet, onset of an ice age, etc.).

    • Photo: Vera Weisbecker

      Vera Weisbecker answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      Perhaps a more specific reason for Dunkleosteus to die out was that it was a type of fish that isn’t around any more. It was a Placoderm, meaning it had huge unwieldy plates of bone to protect its body. Other, more “modern” fish with smaller scales (like, your average herring or shark) were just more agile and ended up replacing the less maneuverable placoderms.

    • Photo: Katie Marriott

      Katie Marriott answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      I don’t know but some good answers there!

      Dunkleosteus do look really cool!

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