Geology

Geology
The 366 daily episodes in 2014 were chronological snapshots of earth history, beginning with the Precambrian in January and on to the Cenozoic in December. You can find them all in the index in the right sidebar. In 2015, the daily episodes for each month were assembled into monthly packages (link in index at right), and a few new episodes were posted from 2015-18. You may be interested in a continuation of this blog on Substack at this location. Thanks for your interest!

Friday, May 16, 2014

May 16. Devonian sharks




Just a quick one today, to mention sharks, which were very much coming into their own during the Devonian.
Devonian fish. Shark at top.

Sharks are remarkably successful fish. Although there have been some changes, the basic plan of sharks has survived, apparently quite well, for more than 400 million years. Sharks are one of the major subdivisions of fish – the ones that have cartilaginous skeletons rather than bony skeletons. Cartilage is a lot more challenging to preserve in rocks than bones, so a lot of sharks are best known from fossils of their teeth. But there are still some body fossils that give us a glimpse into a strange and diverse group.

Stethacanthus, from the late Devonian, had a weird projection on its back – its dorsal fin – that looked like an ironing board or anvil. When you think about the modern hammerhead shark, maybe such an evolutionary adaptation isn’t so weird, but we don’t really know what it was for. Speculation focuses on mating displays.  

—Richard I. Gibson

Links:
Sharks of the Devonian 

Devonian shark teeth

Drawing by Joseph Smit, 1905, public domain

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