Overview
- An international team led by Dr. Mikael Siversson reports the findings in Communications Biology.
- Five partly mineralised vertebrae were recovered from the Darwin Formation in northern Australia, dated to the Early Cretaceous.
- Vertebral morphology ties the specimen to cardabiodontid lamniform sharks, with centra up to 12.6 centimeters across versus roughly 8 centimeters in adult great whites.
- Scaling models built from large datasets of modern lamniforms indicate a body length of roughly 6 to 8 meters and a mass exceeding 3 tons.
- The discovery shifts the emergence of giant modern-type sharks by about 15 million years and supports their role as apex predators alongside marine reptiles in the ancient Tethys seaway.