409 million year tale of sea's oldest predator

[hedgetrimmer]

link: http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1089222003


JOHN INNES


A FOSSIL shark has been dated at 409 million years old - the most ancient of the ocean predators yet found, it was revealed yesterday.

The specimen, discovered in rocks in New Brunswick, Canada, sheds light on a period of shark evolution which is little understood.

Scientists said the shark belonged to the species Doliodus problematicus, previous examples of which could only be identified by their teeth.

Unlike those specimens, the new fossil includes the head and part of the front of the body.

[roguevalley]

1. i love this stuff

if there had been any money in it, i would have chosen
it for a profession.

[Ediacara]

2. oldest shark maybe

but not the oldest predator. Anomalocaris lived 131 million years before the shark and was one bad ass animal that looked like a swimming lobster-shaped can opener:





head on:


And hey.... if we want to get all technical, corals and sponges are predators that lived WAY before both Doliodus and Anomalocaris.

BUT, this is fantastic that they have more than teeth. Sharks are notoriously bad fossils because of the fact they have cartilage skeletons, and decompose rather quickly.

[foo_bar]

3. predator in the journalistic sense

of potentially eating humans, even if humans didn't exist.

[Ediacara]

4. well most sharks are too small to eat humans

and Anomalocaris is big enough to have nibbled on small humans. It aparently had very strong jaws for it's main prey item: trilobites. Trilobites had fully mineralized skeletons (unlike modern crustaceans) and would have been as difficult to crack open as clams.