A new study has revealed that sharks were highly evolved before the Jurassic period, a period of geologic time that lasted roughly 145 million years. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, analyzed the fossilized teeth of two extinct species of shark, known as cladodonts, which lived in the oceans during the Early Triassic period—about 250 million years ago. The researchers found that the teeth of these sharks were not only well-developed, but also highly specialized, suggesting that the evolution of sharks had already progressed to a sophisticated level by the Early Triassic. This finding has implications for our understanding of the evolution of marine life, as it suggests that sharks had achieved a high level of sophistication long before the Jurassic period. This could mean that some of the features we typically associate with modern sharks, such as their ability to swim quickly and to see in the dark, might have already been present before the Jurassic.

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source: Phys.org