450 million years is a ridiculously long amount of time. Almost as long as March 2020! It’s also the same time estimate of how long sharks inhabited our planet.
The earliest sharks began developing around the Silurian era. Since then they have survived 4 mass extinctions. According to a HuffPost article, “a frilled shark from a species dating back 80 million years was caught off Australia” (HuffPost, 2017) .
These are extremely resilient animals and have survived a period of time scientists refer to as “The Great Dying.” So how are humans managing to do what 450 million years and for mass extinctions did not?
In the next post, I’ll answer this question and dive deeper (heh) into the murky waters of overfishing, lax regulation laws, and the reality of what a future without sharks would look like.
In the meantime, stay Jawsome 🦈