Friday, August 05, 2005

Sharks are older than trees?

Sure, I'd heard that sharks are an ancient animal, predating humans and even dinosaurs. But did you know that sharks were around even before trees? TREES?

According to Brigitte Meyer-Berthaud, Stephen E. Scheckler, and Jobst Wendt, the earliest modern tree, the now-extinct Archaeopteris, lived 360-345 million years ago, in forests where the Sahara desert is now.

Sharks, on the other hand, have been around for 400 million years, and survived four global mass extinctions.

Learned this from The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks. Dang.

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