Anyway, she was so nice that she brought it over and we spent the entire night talking about prehistoric sharks and their evolutionary histories. I took the following photo of her with the tooth first thing in the morning. Poor woman is so frail she could barely lift the thing.
Greenland Shark.
Living that deep the shark must be under a lot of pressure to find food.
Re-read that little article. I don't know that that assumption can be made. Its a pretty good rule of thumb that if an animal is found to be in an area where it doesn't normally belong and its acting in a manner that is unusual then there are problems in the environment back "home", they have a special purpose for their travel, or the animal is sick. Im not claiming to know why this shark was doing this but more likely than not there is a problem with the food supply, its engaging in some sort of mating/mate finding behavior, or its dying from something. I seriously doubt that the tagging has much to do with anything related to its subsequent behavior.
That shark doesn’t look a day over 10 million.
I suppose a fish that goes back “nearly 200 million years” is fairly impressive, in a sense, but, then again, I can drive a few miles and catch (from strong populations) fish that go back over 150 million years: Gar. More rarely, bowfins. Both inhabit MANY waterbodies. These sharks are a lot rarer, apparently... Do they taste better? :-)
Send the poor frail thing over to my place. After I get a look at the tooth I’ll help her across the street or something.
*ping*