Prehistoric shark’s tooth found at winery

A 15 million year-old shark’s tooth from a now extinct species has been found at an Austrian winery where it was being used as an ornament at the bar.

Photo credit: Robert Krickl

The discovery was made at the Tiger-Wurth winery in Austria’s Thermenregion when a geoscientist spied the tooth in a lump of limestone on display and thought he knew what it was.

Having stopped by for a glass of wine, Dr Robert Krickl asked if he could take a closer look at the five centimetre long tooth and after a bit of research narrowed it down to an extinct shark known as Cosmopolitodus hastalis, otherwise known as a ‘giant white’.

The chance discovery is all the more exciting and unique because although teeth from this species are reported to have been found in the Thermenregion in the 19th century, all have subsequently been lost down the years.

Part of the Lamnidae family of sharks which today includes great whites and makos, the giant white went extinct over 5 million years ago having cruised the oceans of the Miocene and early Pliocene epochs that ran from 23-5.3m years before our own time.

It is thought it was larger on average than great whites today, regularly growing to over six metres (16 feet) in length and with teeth as long as 7cm.

Winemaker Leopold Wurth said that fossils were regularly found in the area and he and his family liked to collect them and use them as decoration around their home and winery.

The fossil containing the rare shark’s tooth was unearthed a few years ago during some construction work near the winery but Wurth had been unaware of its significance.

It is well known that the limestone soils so highly prized by many wine regions is the result of tens of millions of years worth of petrified marine deposits made up of shellfish, coral reefs, marine mammals and reptiles and, clearly, sharks.

The Thermenregion was no exception. Speaking to the drinks business, Dr Krickl explained: “Until ~13 million years ago, it was the shore of a tropical sea with whales, seacows, turtles, starfish, all kind of fishes,… and also different species of sharks.

“Back then, this sea called ‘Paratethys‘ was connected to the world’s oceans. However, due to the northward continental drift of Africa, the collision with European plates and the resulting up-folding of the Alps, the sea got isolated.

“With time it shrank and more and more freshwater replaced the saltwater. As a consequence holomarine species like sharks went extinct. By ~9 million years the location of the winery [today] was still at the shore of a huge brackish lake which extended from Austria to Romania. It went dry ~7 million years ago and the last deposits indicate pure freshwater. So yes: this particular part of Central Europe was covered by the sea longer than others and for most of the time in its history.”

Krickl concluded by saying that should fossils turn up at any time – in a vineyard, bar or elsewhere – “it is best to NOT lock it away but to show it to a scientist. In this way, we can learn a lot about the past and the eventful history of our planet.”