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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SMART NEWS


RESPECT: SHARKS ARE OLDER THAN TREES



Rachel Nuwer

June 27, 2012

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo: USFWS Pacific

Fun fact of the day: Sharks are older than trees.

The earliest species that we could classify as “tree,” the now-extinct
Archaeopteris, lived around 350 million years ago, in forests where the Sahara
desert is now.



But Sharks? They laugh at trees. They’ve been around for 400 million years,
skirting four global mass extinctions along the way.

But whether they’ll survive the current shark-ocaust driven by our own species’
penchant for expensive soup is yet to be seen. Trees might win the day, after
all.





Rachel Nuwer | | READ MORE

Rachel Nuwer is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn.

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