Meet Dave: Unique Ancient Shark Skeleton on Display at Manitoba Fossil Museum – Winnipeg | Globalnews.ca

If you visit Moderna, Mann, be sure to stop at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Center (CFDC) and say hello to Dave.

Dave is a shark – a very, very old shark. He is part of a new exhibit at the museum, and according to CDFC director Adolfo Cuetara, he may be the first of his species to be discovered.

“It’s not very common to find sharks, because shark skeletons are made of cartilage, a soft material,” Cutara said.

“We usually only find teeth from sharks…. In this case, we have the opposite. We have the entire skeleton of a shark—a big one—but no teeth. That’s too special for science.”

Cuetara said the 15-foot-long Dave is the only nearly complete fossil shark skeleton in Canada, and one of the four or five largest in the world.

He said the skeleton had been hidden in the museum’s archives for more than four decades, and was only recently rediscovered, at which point the CDFC realized what it had.

“With this shark, research is still going on. Hopefully within a few weeks or months, we will know which genus or species it is,” he said.

“It is highly likely that it will be a new species, as there is nothing like it in the registration of fossils from that time.”

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