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Hi @james-ellsworth, I saw your message, but I’m unsure why your comment is showing up here. The ‘ears’ are lateral cusplets, which may have served to help grasp prey and/or prevent food from getting trapped between the teeth. The ancestor of Megalodon had much more prominent lateral cusplets, which were gradually reduced and eventually lost. Arguably, due to a change in diet to fleshier prey. You can read more about it here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2018.1546732

The ancestral species had more fish in their diet. The lateral cusplets serve to stab and hold the fish, like the tines on a fork. As this lineage progressed, the teeth were used to bite into whale blubber which requires a wider serrated cutting tooth (like a steak knife) which rendered the cusplets virtually useless, thus over time, it started to eliminate them.