Sharks of the Past

SHARKS OF THE PAST

Welcome to sharks of the past. On this page we will tell you about sharks that have died out. Are you ready to plunge into the deep, watery world of the past? Read on...

THE MEGLADON

  The mighty megladon (mentioned in the great white shark post) ruled the seas until 1,500,000 years ago. It grew up to 18 metres long and fed on whales, porpoises and other sharks.

  Scientists know very little about the megladon as sharks don't make good fossils but they have a rough idea what a megladon would look like by using the great white as a template and can estimate it's size  by the size of it's (fossilised) jaws.

  The megladon came into existence 18,000,000 years ago, just as the majority of the sharks that had lived with the dinosaurs died out. The reason it to died out was because it outgrew it's food supply. When it died out, it was the turn of the ocean mammals such as whales, seals and dolphins to rule the watery world.

The size of a megalodon compared to today's sharks.

The jaw of a megalodon, displayed in the
American museum of Natural History.

THE WHORL-TOOTH

The whorl-tooth shark lived at about the same time as the megalodon, although they were not quite as ferocious. They got their name from the bizarre arrangement of their teeth. They had a rotating jaw which protruded from their head. At the end of this jaw was a spiral of teeth. Whe at tooth got worn down or was damadged, the spiral rotated, bringing a new tooth into place and putting the damaged one back within the shark's flesh, where calcium in the shark's body could fix or regrow it for when it was next needed. There were an estimated fifteen teeth per spiral. 

These sharks supposedly ate fish and crustaceans, but with no fossil remains aside from the teeth - seeing as all sharks are made of cartilage which is eaten away quite quickly be time - there is no way to prove this. The teeth and few legacies of these sharks have been discovered in China, Western Australia, the U.S and Canada.

An artist's representation of a whorl-tooth shark.