Shark nursery found in South Carolina dates back millions of years, scientists say
Tiny fossils were found at a South Carolina construction site, leading scientists to believe it was once a place for young megatoothed sharks to grow.
That means about 30 million years ago, ancient sharks geared up for taking on large prey at a nursery near modern-day Summerville, according to the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History at the College of Charleston.
”Anything that evolves to eat large prey can’t do that as a juvenile,” research fellow Robert Boessenecker told McClatchy News on Wednesday. “So they basically need a semi-protective environment where they themselves won’t get eaten by other predators.”
Boessenecker was part of a team that went to the construction site and found dozens of small teeth from ancient sharks called Carcharocles angustidens, the museum said this month in a Twitter post.
When recent graduate Addison Miller got a closer look, she discovered many of the teeth measured less than 7 centimeters, shorter than lengths reached in adult sharks from the species, according to the post.
That’s when Miller determined each tooth’s position in the mouth and used that data to estimate how big the animals were when they lived on Earth, according to researchers.
It turns out, most of the teeth were from young sharks.
That information, along with the knowledge that the area was once covered in shallow water and had prey that young sharks could feed on, provided clues that the present-day construction site had been a nursery, according to Boessenecker.
“It gives us a nice little window into the lives of extinct sharks,” Boessenecker said. “For example, this species is one we don’t know a whole lot about because there’s not really many fossil sites worldwide that produce teeth of this species.”
The research, which hasn’t been published, was presented this month at a Society of Vertabrate Paleontology conference, Boessenecker said.
This story was originally published October 21, 2020 at 4:09 PM with the headline "Shark nursery found in South Carolina dates back millions of years, scientists say."
