Shark Fossil Dating Back 330 Million Years Ago Discovered In Kentucky Cave

Scientists have managed to discover the remains of sharks, which lived almost 330 million years ago in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park.

Though the cave is currently a long way from the ocean, scientists believe when the sharks lived 330 million years ago during the Late Mississippian geologic time period, most of North America was covered by oceans.

The shark fossils were initially discovered by Mammoth Cave scientists Rick Olson and Rick Toomey, while they were mapping a remote part of the cave, CNN reported. They sent the photos of their discovery to paleontologist John-Paul Hodnett, who is an expert on Paleozoic sharks.

Hodnett was able to identify shark teeth, and what he felt at that time was shark’s skeleton from the photographs that Olson and Toomey sent him. When he visited the cave in November, he realized that it was not the skeleton that he saw in the photograph, but actually just parts of the head of the shark.

Hodnett determined that the fossil belonged to a species called Saivodus striatus after analyzing the teeth. The Saivodus striatus would be equal to the size of a modern great white shark -- about 16 to 20 feet long, Hodnett told CNN.

Along with the Saivodus Striatus, the scientists were able to identify the remains of 15-20 species of sharks in the cave. According to them, when the sharks died, their remains were encased in sediment that eventually became the limestone where the cave formed.

"It's super exciting, but not exactly the most easy thing to study. Caves are a very special environment, so it's not ideal to be removing big chunks of rock out of it and damage the internal environment by doing this," Hodnett told CNN. "It's gonna be very hard to bring the appropriate equipment in there to properly excavate the specimen out of the cave.”

The researchers believe the findings could help them understand a lot about what was going on in North America during the Late Mississippian period. They will present their preliminary findings in October at a meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"We literally just scratched the surface, and the sharks are just coming out from that scratch," Hodnett told CNN. "So, hopefully, with more field work, we'll get another good batch of specimens to kind of help get at least some more rich diversity."