AMERICANALMANAC (Charles McAdams) - Fossilized shark teeth reveal a prehistoric ocean hidden beneath Egypt's desert
Cairo University researchers pulled 14 fossilized shark teeth from a remote Egyptian plateau, identifying five extinct species that once prowled a warm sea where sand and rock now stretch for hundreds of miles. The teeth came from the Abu-Tartur Plateau, a phosphate-rich highland in Egypt's Western Desert roughly 400 miles southwest of Cairo. The plateau […] The post Fossilized shark teeth reveal a prehistoric ocean hidden beneath Egypt's desert appeared first on American Almanac .
Cairo University researchers pulled 14 fossilized shark teeth from a remote Egyptian plateau, identifying five extinct species that once prowled a warm sea where sand and rock now stretch for hundreds of miles. The teeth came from the Abu-Tartur Plateau, a phosphate-rich highland in Egypt's Western Desert roughly 400 miles southwest of Cairo. The plateau sits between the Kharga and Dakhla oases, today one of the country's most important mining and fertilizer sites. More than 70 million years ago, it was the floor of a tropical ocean. A team led by Cairo University recovered the fossils from a phosphate layer at the site and matched them against specimens found elsewhere in the world. Their findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal…Open