An international team of paleontologists has examined several extremely rare and almost intact skulls and a skeleton of the shark's ancestor dating back 360 million years, discovered in the region of Lac Maïder, in eastern Morocco.
The fossils, described in the scientific journal The Royal Society, come from two species of shark of the genus Phoebodus, which disappeared during the carboniferous period about 299 to 359 million years ago, leaving no known ancestral species, reports the specialized site "Smithsonian.com". This is an exceptional discovery given that the only extant traces of the Phoebodus sharks were their teeth.
According to the researchers, these fossils survived because the region where the sharks died was a shallow ocean basin. Their bodies were covered with sediment and water circulation was limited while the low oxygen level allowed them to fossilize without being destroyed by predators or degraded by bacteria.
However, the fossils being fragile, the team therefore chose to examine them using a scanner rather than extracting them from the rock, it is explained. Images reconstructed by paleontologists have shown that the Phoebodus has a long, slender body with a flat skull and jaw. The creature thus looks much more like a giant eel than a typical shark.
According to National Geographic researcher Tim Vernimen, the three-pointed teeth of the Pheobodus resemble those of the lizard shark, which lives in deep waters and which was first filmed in 2004.
While most modern sharks use their teeth to shred their prey before swallowing them, the lizard sharks, and perhaps Phoebodus, use their unique teeth to capture their prey and swallow them whole.
Comments
Post a Comment