A collection of shark teeth discovered more than a century ago in Wilcox County has turned out to be a new species of prehistoric shark.Â
According to phys.org the species has been named Palaeohypotodus bizzocoi after Dr. Bruce Bizzoco, who was an archeologist and dean at Shelton State Community. He passed away in 2022.Â
The team that studied and made the identification was led by Jun Ebersole, Director of Collections at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham.Â
The discovery of the teeth was "accidental". Ebersole said that he came across the teeth as he was looking through the fossil collections at the Geological Survey in Alabama and found that he did not recognize what kind they were.Â
Afterwards his team began the study, comprising of him and David Cicimurri, Curator of Natural History at South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, and T. Lynn Harrell, Jr., paleontologist and Fossil Collections Curator at the Geological Survey of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Their study is titled, "A new species Palaeohypotodus Glickman, 1964 (Chondrichthyes, Lamniformes) from the lower Paleocene (Danian) Porters Creek Formation, Wilcox County, Alabama, U.S."
The shark is estimated to have lived more than 65 million years ago, just after the dinosaurs went extinct.Â
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