Scientists have found a brand new species of ancient winged shark, which ate up plankton eons earlier than the emergence of large manta rays, in keeping with new analysis revealed Thursday.
The species, Aquilolamna milarcae, which lived round 93 million years in the past, was found in the north east of Mexico. The specimen in query measured round 1.65 metres in size and has a fin span of 1.9 metres.
Like modern-day rays, the species, nicknamed “eagle shark”, had extraordinarily lengthy pectoral fins harking back to wings.
Authors of the research, revealed in the journal Science, stated the “bizarre” creature most likely swam very slowly and was unlikely to have been in a position to hunt for meals.
“You could make the analogy of a glider… it wasn’t at all adapted to swimming fast and following prey,” stated Roman Vullo, lead research writer from France’s National Centre for Scientific Research and the University of Rennes.
Coupled with a big head and no enamel discovered on the skeleton — suggesting they have been very small or lacking fully — Vullo stated “it was more a plankton eater than predator”.
Until the discovery, scientists had solely recognized of 1 class of huge plankton feeders in the Cretaceous interval, a gaggle of huge bony fish often known as pachycormidae.
The eagle shark is now the second recognized plankton consuming fish found from the final epoch when dinosaurs nonetheless stalked the Earth. Pachycormidae died out in the extinction occasion following the Chicxulub meteor strike 66 million years in the past.
“Eagle sharks were little by little replaced by manta rays and devil rays, which developed at the beginning of the Tertiary period” after the extinction, Vullo instructed AFP.
The specimen in the research was present in 2012 in the Mexican area of Vallecillo, which is famend for its nicely preserved fossils.
