Amazing Fact: Sharks Are Older Than Trees
Shark history reaches back roughly 450 million years — before trees, dinosaurs, and nearly everything with a gift shop.
WHY IS THIS IN THE FILE?
Nobody took responsibility quickly enough.
The shark family has been doing this for an absurdly long time.
The earliest fossil evidence for sharks or shark-like ancestors includes scales dating to roughly 450 million years ago. The Natural History Museum notes that this puts their lineage before trees existed on Earth.
There is an important scientific footnote: specialists still debate whether those very earliest scales came from true sharks or close shark-like relatives. Recognizable sharks appear later in the fossil record. Deep time is rude to clean labels.
Either way, the basic point survives: shark history began hundreds of millions of years before humans, before dinosaurs, and before forests looked anything like forests.
Source: Natural History Museum: Shark evolution, a 450 million year timeline.
Mina Foss
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