For Day 2 of Prehistoric Shark Week on paleoaerie, we are going to take a look at my personal favorite shark. In the late Cretaceous, it was called Scapanorhynchus, the spade snout. But its closest living relative is called Mitsukurina owstoni, also known as the goblin shark. The perfect shark for Halloween.
Scapanorhynchus means spade snout, so named for the elongated, flat snout, the same feature which got the modern shark named goblin. Most of them are small, less than one meter, but can get in excess of four meters. Spade snouts were some of the earliest sharks in Neoselachii, the modern sharks. One of the things this means is that they did not just have straight cartilaginous skeletons, they calcified most parts of the skeleton to reinforce the cartilage. They didn’t make true bone, but the calcium spicules provided more strength for the cartilage.
Goblin shark teeth are long and thin, looking like a mouth full of curved needles. But what most people are fascinated by is the amazing length to which they can protrude their jaws. Modern sharks have what is known as hyostylic jaws, meaning that the jaws are not directly connected to the skull. Instead, they are attached at the back of the jaws on an intermediary bone that allows the jaw to swing forward. All sharks can do this to an extent, but the goblin shark is expecially known for it.
The modern goblin sharks are generally only found in deep water. Its Cretaceous cousins, on the other hand, were widespread in shallow marine areas. Like many fish in the Cretaceous, they seem to have survived the mass extinction even at the end of the Mesozoic by going deep.