Oldest modern shark mega-predator swam off Australia during the age of dinosaurs
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 22-Nov-2025 13:11 ET (22-Nov-2025 18:11 GMT/UTC)
Around 115 million years ago, the seas off northern Australia were home to a gigantic ancestor of Jaws. Fossils of this ancient mega-predator reveal that modern sharks experimented with enormous body sizes much earlier in their evolutionary history than previously suspected, and took the top place in oceanic food chains alongside massive marine reptiles during the Age of Dinosaurs. This study presents a new interdisciplinary analysis to reconstruct size evolution in ancient sharks.
Two early-career researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) convinced the expert reviewers of the Carl Zeiss Foundation with their projects. They now have five years to establish their research groups at KIT through the “CZS Nexus” funding program. Each researcher will receive approximately 1.5 million euros. Boris Karanov is developing new algorithms for digital signal processing in optical communication systems, while Frank Rhein is investigating how the CO2 emissions produced by cryptocurrency mining can be reduced by means of physical processes.
In a groundbreaking exploration of the environmental impacts of fires, researchers are shedding light on how gaseous smoke pollutants affect both air and soil quality. This critical study, titled "Impact of Gaseous Smoke Pollutants from Modelled Fires on Air and Soil Quality," is spearheaded by Mikhail Nizhelskiy from the Academy of Biology and Biotechnology Named After D.I. Ivanovskiy at Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation. His work offers a deeper understanding of the often-overlooked consequences of fires on our environment.