A complete fossil of a giant shark that lived alongside dinosaurs has revealed important information about this mysterious predator, including that it was an ancient relative of the great white shark.
shark, of Pterosaur, first discovered in the mid-eighteenth century. The description of this genus is mainly based on their teeth, which may be close to 22 inches (55 cm) long 18 inches (45 cm) wide, suitable for breaking shells found in many marine sediments dating back to Cretaceous (145 million to 66 million years ago).
Unable to examine complete specimens, researchers have so far debated fiercely what the shark’s body shape might have been like.
“The discovery of a complete Pterosaur specimen is truly exciting because it solves one of the most compelling mysteries in vertebrate paleontology,” lead author Romain Vullo, a researcher at Gosciences in Rennes, told CNN in an email. “Life Science”.
In a study published Wednesday (April 24) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, researchers describe a complete shark fossil found in a limestone quarry in Nulon, northeastern Mexico. Its outline is still intact and its body shape suggests that it preyed on sea turtles, which could explain its extinction around 76 million years ago as it competed with other animals that ate the same prey.
The specimens “showed exquisite preservation” because they were stored in a quiet area free of scavengers, Ullo said. “The animal carcasses were quickly buried in soft lime mud and then completely disintegrated.”
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Analysis of the fossils revealed that this large predator belonged to the group of mako sharks (Lamniformes), which includes the great white shark.shark), mako sharks and salmon sharks. It was about 33 feet (10 meters) long and famous for its huge molars, which were unlike those we see on sharks today.
people usually think that Pterosaur It feeds on invertebrates on the seafloor and is an ancient relative of clams and mussels. But new fossils challenge that, revealing that this ancient shark had a streamlined body shape, suggesting it was a fast-swimming pelagic predator. “Newly discovered fossils in Mexico show Pterosaur It looks like a living porbeagle shark,” Ullo said, but with a “unique molar dentition.”
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This new information leads researchers to believe it preyed on large ammonoids, a type of hard-shelled crustacean, and turtles.
“Pterosaur “It occupied a special ecological niche in the late Cretaceous oceans,” Vullo said, because it was the only pelagic shark adapted to eat hard-shelled prey such as turtles. This may explain why it went extinct about 10 million years before the extinction event. “At the end of the Cretaceous, these large sharks may have been in direct competition with some marine reptiles (mosasaurs) that were targeting the same prey,” he said.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article had a headline that said pterosaurs were the ancestors of great white sharks. Corrected April 24 at 6:24 ET to be a relative.
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