Shark Lineage Reaches Back 450 Million Years, Predating Trees and Forests
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Jun 30
Shark Lineage Reaches Back 450 Million Years, Predating Trees and Forests
2 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jun 30
Summary
Middle Ordovician fossils place the deeper shark lineage about 450 million years ago, making it older than trees, forests and broad leaves.
Tiny chondrichthyan-like scales from Australia, described in 2012, provide the earliest evidence, while a 2022 South China fossil added anatomical detail to that early cartilaginous-fish history.
Land at that time had only simple, low plants known mainly from spores rather than trunks or canopies, meaning sharks' ancestors were already in the seas before terrestrial ecosystems gained height.
Forests emerged much later in the Devonian, with a 2024 southwest England study marking one of the earliest known examples of trees reshaping landscapes through roots, sediment and water flow.
The report stresses these were not unchanged modern sharks but an evolving lineage whose great age does not shield today's sharks from human-driven pressure on oceans and habitats.