Something Wiped Out Nearly All Sharks 19 Million Years Ago, New Research Suggests
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A careful arrangement of shark scales, or dermal denticles. (Image: Leah Rubin)
Scientists have stumbled upon a previously unknown extinction event that decimated ocean shark populations 19 million years ago. The cause of this sudden die-off, in which global shark populations plummeted by 90%, is a complete mystery.
The previously unidentified extinction event, as described in a Science paper published today, was discovered by accident. Elizabeth Sibert, the first author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow from the Yale Institute for Biospheric Sciences at Yale University, detected evidence of the extinction event while studying fossilized fish teeth and shark scales. Sibert was seeking to learn more about these mysterious bits and pieces, collectively known as ichthyoliths, so she, along with co-author Leah Rubin, a student at the College of the Atlantic at the time of the research, embark
The biggest shark attack in history did not involve humans.
A new study by Earth scientists from Yale and the College of the Atlantic has turned up a massive die-off of sharks roughly 19 million years ago. It came at a period in history when there were more than 10 times more sharks patrolling the world s oceans than there are today.
When palaeobiologist Elizabeth Sibert set out to build a record of fish and shark populations over millions of years, she didn't expect to be solving a mysterious disappearance case.