PISA, Italy, March 18 (UPI) -- An Italian paleontologist says he and his colleagues have used fossil evidence to determine how an extinct shark attacked its prey 4 million years ago.
Giovanni Bianucci of the University of Pisa said careful, forensic-style analysis of bite marks on an otherwise well-preserved dolphin skeleton allowed him and his colleagues to reconstruct the events that led to the death of the 9-foot dolphin. They also determined the probable killer was a 13-foot shark (Cosmopolitodus hastalis).
"The skeleton lay unstudied in a museum in Torino for more than a century, but when I examined it … I noticed the bite marks on the ribs, vertebrae and jaws," said Bianucci, who led the research. "Identifying the victim of the attack was the easy part -- it's an extinct species of dolphin known as Astadelphis gastaldii. Working out the identity of the killer called for some serious detective work, as the only evidence to go on was the bite marks."
Kenshu Shimada, fossil shark expert at DePaul University and the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in the United States, said: "Studies like this are important because they give us a glimpse of the ecological interactions between organisms in prehistoric seas. Fossil remains of prey species with shark bite marks, like those described by Bianucci and his team, provide direct evidence of what each prehistoric shark ate and how it behaved."
The study is reported in the journal Palaeontology.
