I always find this very funny. It’s as if the sharks today are venerable million year old entities. As if the species sharks today have anything in common with the shark species 100 million years ago.
The horseshoe crab fits much better in this sentiment, as they haven’t physically changed at all this whole time.
The current species of sharks evolved around 200 million years ago, so yeah the species of sharks today have everything in common with the species of sharks 100 million years ago. Sharks are famously also remarkably stable in their evolution. They do evolve and branch out with specializations, but physically the basic shark form has been the same for a very long time. The sharks that were around 400 million years ago when trees first evolved would have been very similar to the sharks we have today.
I always find this very funny. It’s as if the sharks today are venerable million year old entities. As if the species sharks today have anything in common with the shark species 100 million years ago.
The horseshoe crab fits much better in this sentiment, as they haven’t physically changed at all this whole time.
The current species of sharks evolved around 200 million years ago, so yeah the species of sharks today have everything in common with the species of sharks 100 million years ago. Sharks are famously also remarkably stable in their evolution. They do evolve and branch out with specializations, but physically the basic shark form has been the same for a very long time. The sharks that were around 400 million years ago when trees first evolved would have been very similar to the sharks we have today.
Not so sure about that, considering one of the shark fossils discovered had teeth like tombstones, and another had a weird sawblade for a lower jaw.
Those were just rare special edition sharks. The rest of the sharks were just normal ones.