The fossils of a gigantic shark have been found on a stretch of coastline near the city of Darwin in northern Australia.
The discovery consisted of five 115-million-year-old vertebrae belonging to an ancient lamniform shark, or mackerel shark – an order that includes modern-day species such as great white and mako sharks.
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The vertebrae were almost identical to those of the great white shark, however, there was one big difference: the vertebrae of today’s great whites measure around 8cm in diameter, while those found near Darwin were over 12cm.
Given the size of the vertebrae, experts estimate the animal was around 6–8m long and weighed over 3 tonnes. They believe the Darwin lamniform fossils belonged to an extinct family of huge predatory sharks known as Cardabiodontidae. These giants roamed the world’s oceans about 100 million years ago.
However, the most surprising thing about the Darwin specimen, say the researchers, is that it predates all previously known Cardabiodontids by 15 million years, suggesting that modern sharks had experimented with enormous body sizes far earlier than previously thought.
The findings of the study, coordinated by the Swedish Museum of National History, have been published in the journal Communications Biology.
Top image: 115-million-year-old seafloor deposits exposed near Darwin in northern Australia. Credit: Benjamin Kear
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