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In 2013, paleontologist John-Paul Hodnett stumbled upon a 300-million-year-old fossil near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The fossil revealed a complete skeleton of a 6.7-foot-long shark with powerful jaws and long fin spines; an appearance that earned the creature the nickname, Godzilla shark. Now, finally after eight years the Godzilla shark has a real, taxonomic name. Although it’s not nearly as cool.
Smithsonian Magazine reported on the official naming, which comes following years of work to clean and stabilize the fossil. The researchers, working at a lab at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science (NMMNHS), also compared CT scans of the fossil to those of other ancient sharks in an effort to identify it.
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Dracopristis and other species of ctenacanths are part of a unique evolutionary branch of the sharks that diverged from modern sharks and rays roughly 390 million years ago and became extinct by the end of the Paleozoic Era some 252 million years ago.
The assembled team was led by paleontologist John-Paul Hodnett, the program coordinator for the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission’s Dinosaur Park in Laurel, Maryland, and also included Eileen D. Grogan and Richard Lund of St. Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania; Spencer G. Lucas, Curator of Paleontology at NMMNHS; Tom Suazo, former fossil preparator at NMMNHS; David K. Elliot of Northern Arizona University; and Jesse Pruitt of Idaho State University.
New Mexico s 300-million-year-old Godzilla shark gets its official name
In this undated photo provided by John-Paul Hodnett are a row of teeth on the lower jaw of a 300-million-year-old shark species named this week following a nearly complete skeleton of the species in 2013 in New Mexico.
Photo by PTI
The 300-million-year-old shark s teeth were the first sign that it might be a distinct species.
The ancient chompers looked less like the spear-like rows of teeth of related species. They were squatter and shorter, less than an inch long, around 2 centimeters. Great for grasping and crushing prey rather than piercing prey, said discoverer John-Paul Hodnett, who was a graduate student when he unearthed the first fossils of the shark at a dig east of Albuquerque in 2013.
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