330m-yr-old shark’s head found in US
Kentucky: Mammoth Cave National in Park Kentucky is a long way from the ocean, but newly discovered fossils suggest the area was once teeming with sharks.
Scientists have identified the remains of 15 to 20 different species of sharks deep in the cave, including part of the head of a great whitesized monster that’s partially protruding from a wall, paleontologist JohnPaul Hodnett told CNN.
The sharks lived about 330 million years ago in what is known as the Late Mississippian geologic time period, when much of North America was covered by oceans. When they died, their remains were encased in sediment that eventually became the limestone where the cave formed.
“There’s hardly ever any any record at all of sharks teeth coming from these rocks. So that was exciting, Hodnett sad. “So this is a brand new record of sharks from a particular layer of time.”
Mammoth Cave scientists Rick Olson and Rick Toomey were mapping a remote part of the cave when they started seeing shark fossils, according to Vincent Santucci, senior paleontologist with the National Park Service.
They sent photos of their find to Hodnett, because he’s an expert on Paleozoic sharks. He works at Maryland’s Dinosaur Park, a fossil site near Washington, DC, and does support research for the National Park Service.
There were quite a few shark teeth in the photos, Hodnett said, but he also saw cartilage that he thought might be a shark’s skeleton.