June 7, 2021
Pure Science: How sharks disappeared mysteriously 19 million years ago
Sharks have been around for over 400 million years in the earth’s oceans and have survived numerous extinction events. However, new findings indicate that their population was decimated in the open ocean 19 million years ago, and sharks never recovered from it. ThePrint’s Sandhya Ramesh explains how these new findings were made and why they were concerning.
Supplementary reading:
- Research paper: An early Miocene extinction in pelagic sharks https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6546/1105/tab-pdf
- When sharks nearly disappeared https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6546/1036.full
