Daily London
A major archeological find in Western Australia’s north-west has helped prove gigantic sharks roamed the state’s coast 115 million years ago.
The work of Dr Mikael Siversson from the WA Museum helped rewrite the timeline for one of the planet’s most fearsome predators.
The head of earth and planetary sciences played a crucial role in identifying a species of super shark fossil found in Australia.
His breakthrough discovery in WA’s Gascoyne region included teeth that hold the key to a prehistoric world.
“That tooth is 97 million years old, still razor sharp,” he told 9News.
The teeth helped Siversson and his research team identify something straight out of Jurassic Park, a group of closely related mega sharks that grew to the size of orcas around Darwin and in Queensland.
“They dominated the oceans for about 23 million years,” Siversson said.
Siversson’s original discovery was in 1999 in the Giralia Range on Cardabia Station, in Baiyungu country.
It was a major scientific find but the real importance of the discovery only emerged recently.
He said they were the first modern great sharks to evolve into giant-sized sharks, and it happened off the coast of Australia.
“So that’s why the Western Australian specimen is so critical to the understanding of this entire group of giant predatory sharks,” he said.
His work also identified that colossal sharks swam the oceans 10 million years earlier than previously thought.
All from teeth and vertebrae found in the WA outback.
