If you make the trip to Morden, Man., be sure to stop by the Canadian Fossil Discovery Center (CFDC) and say hello to Dave.
Dave is a shark, a very, very old shark. It is part of a new exhibit at the museum and, according to CDFC director Adolfo Cuetara, could be the first of its kind to be discovered.
“It’s not very common to find sharks, because shark skeletons are made of cartilage, a soft material,” Cuetara said.
“Normally we only find shark teeth… In this case, we have the opposite. We have the whole skeleton of a shark, a big one, but no teeth. It’s something very special for science.”
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Cuetara said the 15-foot-long Dave is the only nearly complete fossil shark skeleton in Canada and one of the four or five largest in the world.
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The skeleton had been hidden in the museum’s archives for more than four decades, he said, and was only recently rediscovered, at which point the CDFC realized what it had.
“With this shark, the research is still ongoing. Hopefully in a few weeks or months we will know exactly what genus or species it is,” he said.
“It’s very likely a new species, because there’s nothing like it in the fossil record from that time.”
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