Nearly 93 million years ago, a strange shark that eats plankton unlike other widely known marine invertebrate drifted through the sea which is now northeastern Mexico making use of curiously lengthy wing-like fins that made its body broader than it was.

Shark
(Photo : Lachlan Ross)

Aquilolamna milarcae 

On Thursday, researchers reported the finding of a nearly full fossil of the shark, known as Aquilolamna milarcae, that existed throughout the Cretaceous Period at a time when the land was ruled by dinosaurs.

Its proportions are bizarre as the fin span is about 1.9 meters (6-1/4 feet) and the distance from head to tail is about 1.65 meters (5-1/2 feet) which left the researchers surprised.

The name of Aquilolamna's means "eagle shark," an acknowledgment to its slim pectoral fins, which predominantly served as an efficient stabilizer, according to Romain Vullo, Vertebrate Paleontologist and lead author of the research released in the journal Science.

Romain Vullo, after partnering with Geosciences Rennes, a research center involving the Rennes University and National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France said lots of adjectives can be used to explain this shark as it is strange, rare, exceptional, odd, extraordinary. And it is the only shark that is broader than long.

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The Defunct Creature 

Vullo continued that Aquilolamna is really a good example of a defunct creature showing an unpredictable new morphology. This solidly advocates that other exceptional body shapes and morphological adaptations may have been in existence through the shark's evolutionary history.

Just like all sharks and the similar rays and skates, Aquilolamna had a cartilaginous skeleton and It also had a similiar body shaped like a torpedo and shark's tail but its pectoral fins were quite strange.

The scientists said Aquilolamna turns out to have been a shark that swims slowly and feeds on plankton with the use of filter-feeding, just like basking sharks and whale sharks that eat plankton do today. 

The fossil, discovered in the state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, did not show Aquilolamna's filter eating mechanism. Rays like the manta ray, with their leveled bodies and big pectoral fins inserted all the way to the head, dive through the water as if they are flying in the air. It (Aquilolamna) looks to have done something related.

Shark
(Photo : George Desipris)

The Biggest Predator in the Ocean 

Aquilolamna existed in the open ocean at a period when the seas were inhabited with marine reptiles, ammonites (squid relatives with big shells), different bony fishes, and big sharks. The biggest predator in the ocean was a shark known as Cretoxyrhina, with a size of about 6 meters (20 feet long)

Before the arrival of dinosaurs, the fish group emerged roughly 380 million years ago. Aquilolamna is not the only strange shark that has drifted oceans of Earth.

Sharks and their families have adopted many sizes and shapes which includes an ancient one known as 'Helicoprion' that had a mouth that looks like a spiral saw, another ancient one called Stethacanthus, with its dorsal fin looking like an ironing board, and also sawfish sharks and odd goblin that we have today. 

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