Scientists have had a breakthrough and stumbled upon a shark graveyard at the bottom of the ocean!! Sharks are one of the most feared apex predators of the oceans and there was a shark graveyard, full of fossilized teeth, some millions of years old that had been discovered on the seafloor of the remote Western Australian coast.
Scientists on the CSIRO research vessel, Investigator have made some exciting finds during recent voyages that include discovering a shark graveyard in the deep ocean. Cocos (Keeling) Islands was where the discovery of the shark graveyard on the seafloor occurred. Scientists, led by the Museums Victoria Research Institute, made the surprising discovery during the final investigation at a depth of 5400m which brought up more than 750 mineralized shark teeth! The titillating part of this find is that, according to the Curator of Fishes at the Western Australian Museum, Glenn Moore said that the shark teeth came from an exciting mix of modern and ancient sharks. He said that the teeth look to come from modern sharks, such as mako and white sharks, but also ancient sharks including the immediate ancestor of the giant megalodon shark.
As sharks have cartilage skeletons rather than bones, most of their remains decompose before they become fossilized, except for their teeth and the occasional scales. So these remains are the only clues they have of these ancient animals' 450 million-year history on Earth. The question that has baffled many minds is why so many of these remains, spanning such a long period of history, were gathered in one place. The only rational explanation is that this perhaps was a low point in the ocean floor, resulting in the accumulation of fossils in that certain place on the ocean floor. The other query is what has been the reason for the death of sharks like the mako and great white whose life span is 70 years give or take? Is it just natural death or is it the birth of a new fiendish nightmare that will terrorize the oceans for millions of years to come?
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