A new species of prehistoric daggernose shark was recently discovered among a trove of prehistoric fossils found in Aiken County, South Carolina.
David Cicimurri, curator of the South Carolina State Museum’s natural history collection, and James Knight, of the University of South Carolina Aiken Department of Biology and Geology, found numerous fossils in the formerly underwater location.
The new species has been named Isogomphodon aikenensis, in honor of the place where it was discovered. The finding were published in the most recent edition of the University of California Museum of Paleontology’s publication, PaleoBios.
The researchers believe that this species of shark was once widespread across this part of the country.
“It’s possible that people will come across them if they look in other areas of South Carolina or other places in the Southeast,” Cicimurri told the Aiken Standard. “From what I’ve seen of sharks and rays in that time period, they were pretty widely distributed, at least in the Southeast. So a lot of things we find here you can also find down in Georgia or over in Alabama and Mississippi. I wouldn’t be surprised if they popped up somewhere else.”