09/03/2026
Sharks Are Older Than Trees by Seventy Million Years
Take a very close look at this photo. The ocean existed four hundred and fifty million years ago, long before trees appeared on land.
Fossil evidence shows the earliest sharks appeared during the Ordovician period, around four hundred and fifty million years ago. The first true trees, like Wattieza, appeared during the Late Devonian, around three hundred and eighty million years ago.
That is a gap of seventy million years. An ocean with apex predators, and a land with no shade.
Since then, sharks have survived four of the five great mass extinctions that removed more than ninety percent of life on Earth.
Sources: Natural History Museum London - Early Chondrichthyes fossil record; Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History - Wattieza first tree.
