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Sharks are some of the most successful , fierce and mysterious predators our world has ever known . With a history spanning around half a billion years , thesharkbloodline has farm the mightymegalodon ; the bizarre , bombilation - saw - jawedHelicoprion ; and the fearsomegreat white shark . So how have they done it ?
John Long , a paleontology prof at Flinders University in Australia , has been researching ancient shark and other fossilized fish for more than 40 years . In his latest Holy Writ , " The Secret History of Sharks " ( Ballantine Books , 2024 ) , Long tells the incredible taradiddle of shark development . He spoke to Live Science about what he ’s learn .
Author John Long inside a set of megalodon jaws at the Australian Museum.
Patrick Pester : Sharks have been around for about half a billion years . How have they survived so long ?
John Long : They’ve been resourceful and adaptive . They ’re the only chemical group of backboned , jawed creatures on the satellite to have survived all five majormass extinction effect . And it ’s not a matter of them pronounce , " Oh , there ’s a massive extinction issue coming ; I ’ll have to whip up some fresh adaptation . " It ’s that at any time these mass experimental extinction events struck , there was enough variety in sharks that at least some lineages of them get through .
As they develop a superior consistency programme , which they did by the Devonian catamenia [ 419 million to 359 million years ago ] , sharks then looked a lot like sharks today . That body plan allowed them to broaden a lot more speedily , so each mass extinction result had less and less of an impression on them from that point on .
Author John Long inside a set of megalodon jaws at the Australian Museum.
They also start diversifying in the Devonian period to develop suppress case of tooth plate , as well as precipitous , pierce , tearing and slicing teeth . They even break filter feed well before any other vertebrates . So they ’ve always had this ability to be very shaping with their dental growing , create new tooth types and young tooth tissues . That ’s been one of their biggest delivery graces , almost like a Swiss Army knife variety of teeth , of adaptation , that they could adapt to any form of nutrient resource that was around .
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PP : We do n’t want to give too much away , but can you portion out something you uncovered as part of this Word of God that investigator did n’t lie with before ?
A new megalodon restoration shows the animal’s extended body shape.
JL : Absolutely . A lot of the research I treated as investigatory news media with my backcloth in fish organic evolution and shark evolution . I ’ve publishedseveral papersdescribing new metal money of shark , and I ’ve dug them up myself — so I have that experience . I was able to reach all of my colleagues who are expert in all the unlike fields of shark evolution and question them . bit by bit , a mass of them open up and shared with me research in insistency that had n’t even gone to publish when I wrote the book . Now , a lot of those theme have add up out , but I was able-bodied to muse on that and ramp up it into the book well before it was public noesis .
I got all the new data aboutmegalodon[Otodus megalodon ] , the greatest predatory animal that ever lived . They ’re just amazing . A mountain of the new research that was just latterly published was about the fact that it waswarm - blooded . Researchers turn out its body temperature through constellate isotope paleothermometry , which is measuring the temperature that the [ isotope ] bond form at when the gristle is imprint . They can front at living shark and get that temperature range , then employ the same geochemistry to fossils and get an precise range of what the eubstance temperature was . Now we do it that megalodon had a consistency temperature of about 27 degree Anders Celsius [ 80 degree Fahrenheit ] .
PP : What does that mean for the shark if it ’s strong - blooded ?
Shenacanthus,the oldest complete early shark-like fossil, discovered in China in 2022.
JL : It mean that it can go places other shark ca n’t go . It can go into colder waters — further south or further northward . We ’ve get remains of megalodon tooth from all around the globe — everywhere except Antarctica . There are Pliocene [ 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago ] fossil site in Antarctica that are from the age when megalodon was still around and in its prime , and those sites have whale fogy but no megalodon tooth at all . I put this together and think that mayhap giant set forth migrating down to Antarctica as a means of escaping from megalodons and birth a secure bema to feed and then came back to the warmer waters to give birth .
PP : There are still some gaps in the shark fossil record . What do you think is the large undefended dubiousness in shark evolution research ?
JL : For the first 56 million yr of shark evolution , we ’ve got very little [ fossil evidence ] . We ’ve only got some scales to start with in the Ordovician period [ 485 million to 444 million class ago ] . It ’s not until the Devonian period of time , around 419 million geezerhood ago , that we commence getting shark teeth in copiousness in the fossil record and we happen the first complete fossil shark . That ’s when our knowledge of sharks really picks up .
The with child dubiousness is , what is the relationship between sharks and placoderms likeDunkleosteus , these armored fishes that ruled the roost in the Silurian and Devonian periods [ 444 million to 359 million years ago ] and went nonextant at the goal of the Devonian , when sharks really blossomed ?
A novel find out ofChinafrom the early Silurian is a fish calledShenacanthus , which is shark - like , having shark - like dorsal quintet spines , but it ’s come armoured plates around the head , like the placoderms . We do n’t have the jaws , so we do n’t have the teeth — we do n’t know if it even had teeth — but it could be a sound example of these really former sharks that we only know from scale and pentad spine .
There are all these mysteries : Did placoderm give rise to sharks by losing armour , or did sharks arrive at armour and become placoderm ?
PP : A study earlier this year estimated thathumans now kill up to 80 million sharksa year . You ’ve described shark as nature ’s dandy survivor , but can they survive us ?
JL : That ’s the ultimate question I beat in the book . And what can we discover from shark as ultimate survivors ? In the book , I use a conservative figure and say between 70 [ million ] and 100 million sharks a year are kill through the shark break water industry alone , and it ’s terrible . It ’s a atrocious way for the sharks to die . They just rationalize the flipper off and throw the living shark back in the piddle to die out a slow , painful end .
Some country , like the U.K. , arebanning shark finningand the import of shark fin ware . Other countries need to follow . That ’s the only way we can quit it . In Asiatic state like China , where shark fin soup was the dainty of the ancient dynasty , the great unwashed are becoming more environmentally cognisant and starting toturn awayfrom these older traditions that actually are extinguish the planet .
My promise is that more information and more education to the public about this horrible practice session will see hoi polloi just refuse to stomach shark fin soup Peter Sellers . I surely wo n’t go to any eating house if I cognize that ’s on the computer menu . I also go for countries will get together in full term of enforcing lawmaking .
PP : Do you call back your book will serve with rehabilitate the public ikon of sharks by consecrate a more three - dimensional view of what they are , as opposed to just senseless killers ?
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JL : Exactly . Ever since " Jaws , " we ’re all frightened to go in the weewee — myself included . But they ’re beautiful thing . I was bid to go on a shark tour to see thegreat whites[Carcharodon carcharias ] myself off the Neptune Islands of South Australia — the same surface area where they filmed the live scenes for " Jaws . " I was at first a fleck apprehensive and a bit terrified . But I eventually got in the shark cage , and I started seeing this beautiful , self-aggrandising white shark swimming around . She was not the least bit interested in me , just pore on the tuna bait they were throwing out .
I spent a total of seven or eight hour over the course of three day there , watching mayhap half a dozen different bloodless shark . I was stunned at how individual they all were , the single personality , the single battle scar and wound that they all bore . They ’ve each fetch a aliveness taradiddle , and each one deserves a chance at life as much as we do .
This consultation has been concentrate and edited for clarity .
The cloak-and-dagger account of Sharks : The Rise of the Ocean ’s Most Fearsome Predators by John Long — $ 21.82 on Amazon
If you enjoy this interview with John Long , you’re able to read more about the double-dyed and untold story of how sharks emerged as Earth ’s ultimate survivors , in his new book , " The Secret History of Sharks : The Rise of the Ocean ’s Most Fearsome Predators . "
