Sharks acquire around 450 million years ago , which means they ’ve hitched a rise on planet Eartharound the galaxy twice . If that ’s not yet given you a fact - induced concern , it may tip off you over to get wind that it also means shark were on Earth before tree , at a sentence when Saturn did n’t have rings yet .
Part of their success comes down to their flexibleness when it comes to environmental conditions , able-bodied to survive in a wide mountain chain of oceans and at unlike depths .
" I opine it is safe to say that it is partly because sharks are able to work different parts of the piddle pillar - from deep , gloomy oceans to shallow seas , and even river systems , " Emma Bernard , a curator of fossil fish at the Natural History Museum pronounce in for each one for the museum . " They eat up a wide variety of food , such as plankton , Pisces the Fishes , crabs , seals and heavyweight . This multifariousness means that sharks as a grouping are more potential to outlive if thing in the ocean change . "
One of the long - living shark , the Greenland shark , certainly look prehistoric . We actually only found out that they were capable of living toaround 400 age oldthanks to theatomic dud , but the earliest sleeper sharks did n’t go forth until around100 million years ago , by which fourth dimension this group of Pisces the Fishes had already been splashing around on Earth for well over a galactic twelvemonth .
Throughout their creation , they ’ve taken on some pretty stinking morphology , from the bizarrewhorl - toothedHelicoprion , to thewarm - bloodedmighty megalodon . For a prospicient time , we call up megalodon was a stocky ball of execution mouth , but a recent studyrevealedthat they may actually have been long and lissome predatory animal .
We ’re still finding their ancient remains across the world – and while we ’ve only get teeth to work from ( those damn cartilaginous bones ) , some of the specimen are quite noteworthy . Just suss out out thismanganese - encrusted megalodon tooththat was find at a depth of around 3,090 metre ( 9,842 foot ) .
In the ~450 million twelvemonth they ’ve had to get descend , sharks have revealed some pretty unusual behaviors . In 2022 , footage catch ashark strolling around on landlike it was no big deal . At least ninespeciesof sharks are bed to use their fins to move about in shallow H2O , and some of these make brief pleasure trip whole onto commonwealth .
So whatever that saying is about old heel and new deception , we ’re not buying it . Sharks seem to have an endless variety of curious tricks up their tail fin , including , most recently , possiblyknocking up a stingray .
