
Aug 25, 2026
✦Earth.com
Shark records spanning 7,000 years challenge assumptions about overfishing
Fossil shark scales spanning 7,000 years show Panama's Pacific coast once held 20 times more sharks than the Caribbean. Researchers counted 3,497 scales from seafloor mud to track population history. Erin Dillon said, "The biggest surprise for me was the sheer number of shark dermal denticles in our Pacific samples."