Whence the Shadows? 213 



North and South America, Asia, Africa, and New Zealand. The shark 

 that bore these teeth had been assumed to be extinct for about 100 

 million years. Yet, there it was. 



It was given the name of its fossil ancestor: Scapanorhynchus. But 

 the shark's appearance— its strange teeth and forbidding mien— sug- 

 gested the childhood horror of the goblin, and Goblin shark became 

 its common name. By the way, the Goblin shark lived up to its name 

 not long ago. A break occurred in a telegraph cable lying on the bottom 

 of the Indian Ocean at 750 fathoms. When the cable was hauled to 

 the surface, workmen discovered it had been damaged by a fish that left 

 a distinctive tooth imbedded in it. The work of a GobUn! 



Other sharks that are living fossils swim today's seas. These sharks, 

 virtually unchanged from the Jurassic Period to the Atomic Age, in- 

 clude members of the Hexanchidae family, whose most distinguishing 

 characteristics are their 6 or 7 gill slits. (All other "modern" sharks have 

 5, save for Pliotrema, one of the Sawsharks.) 



Whether still alive in a modern ocean or locked forever with the 

 other fossils in a forgotten prehistoric sea, the shark is a creature of 

 marvelous consistency, a triumph of adaptation to the harsh demands 

 of life on this planet Earth. Millennia upon millennia ago, the shark 

 mastered its environment. Millions upon millions of years before the 

 first precursor of man appeared, the shark began a dynasty that has re- 

 mained unbroken. 



The Modern Shark 



Shark is a word whose very letters are rooted in fear— the fear of 

 a jaw filled with biting, slashing teeth. The fish we know today as the 

 shark was first known in English as the tiburon, the Spanish word for 

 shark. In 1569, back from a freebooting expedition against the Spanish, 

 sailors of Sir John Hawkins' fleet put a tiburon on exhibit in London. 

 But Spain and Spanish words were not popular in England then, and 

 perhaps for this reason the great fish was given a new name— shark. 



The word may derive from several sources, for its origin is as hazy 

 as the origin of the ancient shark family itself. All the possible roots 

 point toward attributes of the shark— Schiirke, the German word for 

 villain; the Anglo-Saxon word seer an, which means "to shear or cut." 

 Shark appears to have been applied to human varlets as early as to 

 murderous fish; a petty thief or swindler was called a "shark" as far 

 back as Elizabethan times. And today we have loan, pool, card, and 

 business sharks. Shark is a fine word. Its very sound is sharp. Perhaps 

 no other cry can command such immediate attention. It has that harsh 

 and piercing note of emergency appropriate to so many of the species. 



