If you'd like a special ancient treasure of your own, try combing the beaches within the 'shark tooth capital of the world.' ✨🏝
Florida is well-known among paleontologists as a rich source of shark fossils. But records of such finds around the state have not been examined systematically — until now.
Victor Perez, an assistant curator of paleontology at Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, launched the fossil investigation to identify and fill any gaps in Florida's chondrichthyan records. Chondrichthyans are a large and diverse class of fishes with cartilage skeletons, such as sharks and rays.
Florida holds the unofficial title of"shark tooth capital of the world" due to the quantities of fossil shark teeth that are found there, according to Perez. Because sharks' skeletons are mostly cartilage, they typically don't mineralize to produce fossils. By comparison, their high-calcium teeth are frequently preserved in the fossil record, according to the Florida Museum .
Many mackerel shark species, which had long, thin teeth suited to catching fast-moving prey, became extinct during this time, likely because the climate cooled, researchers reported in 2019 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . That enabled ground sharks — which have specialized serrated teeth for catching a wider variety of prey — to populate ecosystems that mackerel sharks once dominated, as competition for resources declined.
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