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On the origin of the great white shark Carcharodon carcharias

Conference Paper · October 2019

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5 authors, including:

Patrick Leopold Jambura Julia Türtscher

University of Vienna University of Vienna
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Faviel Alejandro López Romero Catalina Pimiento

University of Vienna Swansea University
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 Session I: Elasmobranch Biology and Physiology

ORAL CONTRIBUTION

On the origin of the great white shark Carcharodon carcharias

Patrick L. JAMBURA1, Julia TÜRTSCHER1, Faviel A. LÓPEZ-ROMERO1, Catalina PIMIENTO2,

Jürgen KRIWET1
1
Department of Palaeontology, University of Vienna, AUSTRIA
2
Department of Biosciences, Swansea University, UNITED KINGDOM
patrick.jambura@gmail.com

The fossil record of modern sharks mainly consists of isolated teeth due to their poorly mineralized
cartilaginous endoskeleton and a continuous tooth replacement that forms thousands of teeth during
a sharks’ lifetime. As a result, phylogenetic analyses of extinct shark taxa are mostly based on isolated
teeth and therefore often lead to ambiguous results. The great white shark Carcharodon carcharias
is known since the late Miocene, a period in which a number of big lamniform sharks occurred, i.e.,
†Otodus megalodon, †Cosmopolitodus hastalis and †Carcharodon hubbelli, which vanished after the
Plio-Pleistocene marine megafauna extinction (2.5 mya). The evolutionary history of the great white
shark remains highly debated and two hypotheses have been proposed: (1) C. carcharias is closely
related to the megatoothed sharks, including †O. megalodon; (2) C. carcharias shares a more recent
common ancestor with mako sharks and descended from the broad toothed mako shark †C. hastalis.
Although the latter hypothesis is currently favoured, the occurrence of a narrow- and a broad-toothed
form of †C. hastalis further complicates the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of the great
white shark.
Here we report of an exceptional find of two well preserved shark skeletons of a juvenile (TL ~1.7m)
and an adult (TL ~5m) †Cosmopolitodus hastalis from the late Miocene Pisco Formation of Peru,
which display broad teeth. The presence of articulated jaws allowed us to reconstruct the tooth files
of this species and thus a more accurate phylogenetic analysis of lamniform sharks based on dental
characters could be performed, including extinct mako sharks, Isurus spp. Furthermore, geometric
morphometric analyses are performed to visualize the morphospace occupation of Isurus,
†Cosmopolitodus and Carcharodon. This combined approach allowed us to reconstruct the origin of
Carcharodon carcharias and the dental transition from fossil mako sharks to the extant great white
shark.

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