What a 5-Million-Year-Old Bite Reveals About Climate Change and Sharks

Researchers found shark tooth fragments embedded in two early Pliocene whale skull fossils from the North Sea.

One bite likely came from a modern sixgill shark scavenging; the other appears to be from an extinct mako-like shark in an active attack.

The fossils show how climate-driven shifts in whale and dolphin populations also affected the sharks that depended on them.

The study offers a fossil record of predator-prey change that may help explain how marine ecosystems respond to warming oceans.