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It swam slowly through the sea with a tail fin that resembled that of modern sharks and side fins that stretched outward like the wings of modern birds. It is therefore no wonder that this bizarre creature, which died about 93 million years ago in Mexico, was called the eagle shark. This is especially appropriate because the pectoral fins on this sample – the first of its kind found – gave a “span” of about 6.2 feet, obscuring its length of 5.4 feet, lead researcher Romain Vullo of France ‘s National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Rennes tells Live Science. A quarryman discovered the fossilized skeleton of the shark and soft tissue imprints in a limestone in the state of Nuevo León, Mexico, which was formerly part of a vast inland sea. The species is called. Aquilolamna milarcae, or eagle shark from the Milarca Museum, where the fossil will be displayed.
It would have had a unique chimeric look, Vullo says. But although it is classified as a shark, the eagle shark looked more like a kind of ray than a great white. The fossil shows no sign of pelvic or dorsal fins – or teeth. “This previously unknown body plan represents an unexpected evolutionary experiment with underwater flight under sharks, more than 30 million years before the rise of manta and devil rays,” reads the study released Thursday. Science. According to Live Science, modern plankton-eating elasmobranches (fish with skeletal bones) form two groups: those with traditional shark bodies and those with flatter bodies, such as rays. The eagle shark is not an ancestor of rays, but was probably a wide mouth filter feeder that ate on plankton, as the rays do today. Vullo tells AFP that rays replaced eagle sharks after most species became extinct about 66 million years ago. (Read more discovery stories.)