So why the big deal about finding a shark at Gogo? The Gogo Formation is undoubtedly one of the world’s best sites for studying the early evolution of fishes as it yields superb three-dimensional specimens that lived 380 million years ago, a very important time in fish evolution. This photo of me holding the Gogo shark was snapped minutes after the discovery on July 7, 2005. I was overjoyed at finding the first fossil shark in more than 60 years of collecting from the site. Examining the specimen with my hand lens revealed the teeth had multiple cusps fixed onto a broad bony base – a feature unique to sharks at this time. I had just split a limestone nodule with my hammer and saw a vague outline of a pair of jaws staring at me. I was searching for fossils on Gogo Station in the Kimberley, near Fitzroy Crossing, about a four-hour drive inland from Broome.
Finding the fossilįinding a very rare fossil in the field gives one a kind of euphoric rush and I recall it well the day I found the Gogo shark, at 11am on July 7, 2005. This poor fossil record is partly responsible for scientists thinking that sharks must represent a primitive condition in vertebrate evolution compared to all other fishes and land animals (tetrapods) which have a well-ossified bony skeleton.īut this idea has just been challenged due to the discovery, announced today in the journal PLOS One, of a 380-million-year-old fossil shark from Western Australia named Gogoselachus lynbeazleyae that shows remnant bone cells present in its cartilaginous skeleton.
Cladoselache, one of the oldest complete fossil sharks, is dated at around 360 million years old, but its remains are compressed, unlike the new fossil shark from Gogo in Western Australia.
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