Giant Sharks.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7, 14 August 1912, Page 12

Giant Sharks.

It perhaps not genern4ly recognised •that 'ome ejM'des of sharks are among fire ‘hugest of marine a-nimals, yet it h a that eerbfdn of tihem can be compared only with the whale. These giant ?4»rks. however, are not well known, they are very rare; turn up in most out of the wiy pl.vees. land usually disintegrate before they can be carefully measured or studied. The largest species bring at the present day are the great whale shark and the Lavsking .-ihark. The former is known from specimens stranded at variot’s times at the ('-ape of (»<»1 Hope, on the coasts of India, Peru, Louer I alifornia. the Pacific archipelagoes, and. most recently, FTorida. It i* thus very widely dfstrrbiited. It attains a length of over 50ft. A specimen taken in the Seychelles in 1863 was meassired rtnd fouml to be over 45ft, an! others recorded from the same locality by a reliable observer w<»re over 50ft. Fortunately, thi- monster is quite Irarmlc--'. It has very small teeth, arhl feeds 0:1 the minute organisms abounding at t’’ e surface of tlie sea.* which it strains through its gill rakers. The .same Krue of the grrtit basking shark, wb: h is found especially in >the Arctic Ocean. Tliis species apj>roacbes the whale sJnirk in size, and, like it. is an entirety harmksa creature, feeding upon the miernotiganisms of the sea. But if the hurgest sharks of to-xlay ;we harnrlesH* the same is not true of their congeners in tin' p’.st. Tr Eocene times, the geologic during which mammals rose to their place of siwpreinwc.v in the anima! world, there lived in the sea a giant shauk larger than lany of the jwesent day, and withal a most terrific monster. Tb’S Mtark has received connailerable attention during the past year wt the Amerf can Mii»>oum of Natural Huatonr, through the fact that the moscinn >ro currd hundred teeth of thifr (it*, which were set up In a restoraitiofi

of it* jaws.—From the ‘ Scientific Amen* can.*