Beginning in September, visitors to the Cincinnati Museum Center will be able to experience a new, permanent exhibit offering a peek into a world that existed 450 million years ago.
Every person who is moderately interested in dinosaurs knows the theory that they were wiped out some 66 million years ago when an asteroid or comet struck Earth, causing the most famous mass extinction event in history. What many people do not realise is that moment was not the most devastating mass extinction event to hit the planet, far from.
Scientists uncover mysterious mass extinction event that nearly wiped out sharks 19 million years ago
More than 90% of all sharks suddenly disappeared and no one knows why.
Credit: Pixabay.
Sharks are some of the most resilient and successful predators in history, having been around for more than 400 million years ago. Believe it or not, sharks are actually older than trees, which didn’t appear in their familiar form trunk and crown of leaves or fronds until the Late Devonian, some 360 million years ago. However, that doesn’t mean that sharks haven’t had their fair share of close calls with total annihilation, including a previously unknown mass extinction approximately 19 million years ago, which was only recently uncovered by scientists.