FOSSILISED SHARK TOOTH

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14089, 22 March 1939, Page 4

FOSSILISED SHARK TOOTH

DISCOVERY AT MAKURI. Linking New Zealand with the days when the whole country was at the bottom of the sea, u< fossilised shark’s tooth was found recently by a workman at Makuri Guige. ‘The tooth was discovered iu some rocks immediately after a blast, and had apparently been imbedded in the rock itself. How the tooth got there is explainable by the fact that sea mud in which it would become embedded while N.-w Zealand was part of the sea bottom, would harden in the course of thousands of Years into limestone rock, being made up ol the minute lime skeletons ol millions ot tiny sea. creatures. Sharks have apparently not changed much in the time that has elapsed since New Zealand first became dry land as the tooth found embedded in the lock is very much the same as the teeth of sharks caught nowadays, being triangular in shape, about an inch long and with two serrated edges leading down to a *harp point. This lack of change is not in itself surprising, since the time between the death of the shark which it adorned in life and the prosent is i ot, geologically speaking, a very long one. and evolution in sharks would not have proceeded very far. No doubt a biologist would be able to fiml sufficient difference to enable him to identify it as the tooth of a. prehistoric shark, but to the eye of the average man it appears as nothing more than a discoloured shark s tooth.