Fossils reveal seven extinct shark species in Egypt’s desert

At the Abu-Tartur Plateau in Egypt’s Western Desert, a return trip to a fossil bed produced 14 shark teeth—long and slender, sharply curved, broad, and serrated. The team led by Cairo University paleontologist Tarek Yassin identified seven extinct species, five of them never previously documented at Abu-Tartur.

The find comes from the phosphate-rich Duwi Formation, the seabed of a shallow inland sea that covered parts of the region around 80 million years ago. Connected to the southern margin of the ancient Tethys Ocean, the warm water supported a marine ecosystem long before falling sea levels and tectonic shifts exposed the seafloor and left it as desert.

The teeth matter because shark skeletons are mostly cartilage, which rarely survives fossilization. Teeth are therefore the most reliable fossil evidence of ancient shark populations. Comparing their forms with existing fossil records identified species including Cretalamna cf. maroccana, Scapanorhynchus cf. raphiodon, Serratolamna cf. serrata, Squalicorax bassanii, and Squalicorax pristodontus. Two—Serratolamna cf. serrata and Squalicorax bassanii—had never been documented anywhere in Egypt.

The shapes also map a more structured ecosystem than a single shark population sharing one uniform habitat. Researchers associate Squalicorax with nearshore or inner-shelf settings, while Scapanorhynchus points toward deeper water on the outer shelf and slope. Different teeth suggest different feeding strategies and neighborhoods within the same ancient sea.

And so what, concretely? The discovery gives paleontologists a sharper map of how marine life was distributed across North Africa’s tropical seas before the region became desert. It is still a fossil record built from teeth, not a complete census: the evidence shows which sharks were present and hints at their habitats, but does not reconstruct the whole ecosystem.