The evolution of sharks

Fascinating feats such as skin regeneration.

This evolution isn’t unique to sharks - starfish, sea cucumber, crustaceans and other ocean animals are adept in the art of cell regeneration, but sharks are the only fish with this remarkable ability to heal.

This is a Greenland shark – a species that can live to be at least 250 years old. That means around the time the oldest confirmed shark was born, the world was a very different place to what it is now.

They evolved into a variety of hominid species, all of whom have since been discontinued, except one—a saucy one called homo sapiens. For them, the advancements in intelligence proved to be a major survival asset, so their cognitive capacity rapidly increased, developing into an array of shiny new tools that no animal had ever possessed before. Thr... See more

While other vertebrates, such as the rougheye rockfish and the bowhead whale, can reach an impressive age of around 200 years, the Greenland shark is by far the longest-lived vertebrate with some estimates as high as 512 years.