15 million years before Megalodon, this huge ancient shark explored the oceans
A giant shark that lived 115 million years ago was larger than the modern great white shark, paleontologists have discovered.
Reinhard Dirscherl via Getty Images
Before the famous giant Megalodon, another fearsome marine predator roamed the seas. According to a paper published earlier this year communication biology, A giant shark that exceeded the size of modern-day great whites Discovered water in what is now Australia 15 million years before the rise of the megalodon.
By analyzing a set of five vertebrae found on an Australian beach, paleontologists estimated that this ancient shark was about eight meters in length – for comparison, great white sharks grow to about six meters today.
“It would have looked for all the world like a modern, giant shark, because that’s the beauty of it,” said study co-author Benjamin Care, senior curator at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. associated Press“This is a body model that has worked for 115 million years, like an evolutionary success story,”
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Although the shark has one 450 million years long According to history on Earth, the ancestors of modern great whites did not appear in the fossil record until 135 million years ago. And importantly, these ancestors were generally small fry – just a meter or so in length. Older discoveries suggested that giant sharks like Megalodon (which could reach 17 metres) evolved around 100 million years ago. But new analysis suggests that giant sharks arrived on the scene earlier than previously thought.
The team behind the discovery now plans to look for other ancient giant shark remains and add some more color to the shark evolutionary tree.
“They may have been around before,” Kear told the AP. “This thing had ancestors.” Before the famous giant Megalodon, another fearsome marine predator roamed the seas. According to a paper published earlier this year current biology, A giant shark that exceeded the size of modern-day great whites Discovered water in what is now Australia 15 million years before the rise of the megalodon.
By analyzing a set of five vertebrae found on an Australian beach, paleontologists estimated that this ancient shark was about eight meters in length – for comparison, great white sharks grow to about six meters today.
“It would have looked for all the world like a modern, giant shark, because that’s the beauty of it,” said study co-author Benjamin Care, senior curator at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. associated Press“This is a body model that has worked for 115 million years, like an evolutionary success story,”
Although the shark has one 450 million years long According to history on Earth, the ancestors of modern great whites did not appear in the fossil record until 135 million years ago. And importantly, these ancestors were generally small fry – just a meter or so in length. Older discoveries suggested that giant sharks like Megalodon (which could reach 17 metres) evolved around 100 million years ago. But new analysis suggests that giant sharks arrived on the scene earlier than previously thought.
The team behind the discovery now plans to look for other ancient giant shark remains and add some more color to the shark evolutionary tree.
“They may have been around before,” Kear told the AP. “This thing had ancestors.”
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