Researchers collected more than 750 shark teeth at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. (Image credit: Ben Healley/Museums Victoria)
LiveScience has a story about the recent discovery of a massive shark tooth deposit in the Indian Ocean. In October 2022, researchers about the RV Investigator made an unexpected discovery. During a month long expedition, while trawling for fish for an deep water biodiversity survey, the trawling net pulled up hundreds of shark teeth. The find included both modern and fossilized teeth. Shark shed teeth throughout their lives. The researchers are uncertain as to why the teeth are there is such a high concentration.
"It was our very last sample of the trip before heading back to Australia," Dianne Bray(opens in new tab), senior collections manager at the Museums Victoria Research Institute, told Live Science. "I was a little disappointed at first when we hauled up the net because it was filled with mud and I knew that there wasn't going to be many fish specimens. And even if there were, they would be rumbled and damaged from all the mud."
But as the researchers sifted through the mud-caked material, they realized the catch was than just a colossal mud pie.
"We tipped the contents out on the deck of the boat and as we went through everything, we found shark tooth after shark tooth," Bray said. "We were finding teeth from [modern] mako and [great] white sharks, but also fossilized teeth from ancient sharks like the immediate ancestor of the giant megalodon shark."
