Scientists have discovered a new species of shark in the Atlantic Ocean –whose ancestors date back to before the dinosaurs. Josh King has more:
Sharks are a mysterious, understudied group of animals. Sometimes, our fear of them prevents us from getting too close. Other times, the ocean dwellers are simply out of reach, since some species live in extreme depths thousands of feet below the surface.
“This is a very cryptic population,” says Blake Chapman, a marine biologist and shark expert at Australia’s University of Queensland. “They’re a very poorly understood group of animals, these kinds of sharks.”
But despite these odds, shark research still emerges.
Recently, scientists at the Florida Institute of Technology have confirmed that there is a new species of sixgill shark. Now named the Atlantic sixgill shark, this species inhabits the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as parts of the Indian and Pacific oceans. Its ancestors date back more than 250 million years, which is 20 million years before the time of dinosaurs. (Watch: “These Sharks Thrive Inside an Underwater Volcano“)
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