Gigantic Shark!

The fossilised jawbone, teeth and scales of an enormous 10-meter predatory shark, which would have roamed the seas around 89m years ago, have been dug up in Kansas, USA. “The bottom-dwelling predator had huge tooth plates, which it likely used to crush large shelled animals such as giant clams. Palaeontologists already knew about the shark, but the new specimen suggests it was far bigger than previously thought. The scientists who made the discovery, published in the journal Cretaceous Research, last week also released details of other newly discovered giant plankton-eating fish that swam in prehistoric seas for more than 100 million years. But this new fish, called Ptychodus mortoni, is both bigger and more fierce, having a taste for flesh rather than plankton. It may even have been the largest shellfish-eating animal ever to have roamed the Earth. Dr Kenshu Shimada of DePaul university in Chicago, Illinois, US found the fossilized remains of the shark in rocks known as the Fort Hays Limestone in Kansas. ‘Kansas back then was smack in the middle of an inland sea known as the Western Interior Seaway that extended in a north-south direction across North America,’ says Dr Shimada.”