Sharks Are Older Then trees, why ?.

Sharks predate trees by roughly 50 million years — a fact that gets repeated constantly, usually alongside the claim that sharks have "barely changed" in 400 million years. That second part isn't true. Sharks were nearly wiped out at the end of the Permian, vanished from the shallow-water fossil record for 120 million years, and lost over 60% of their species at the end of the Cretaceous. What actually survived, again and again, wasn't an unchanging animal — it was a cheap, generalist toolkit that happened to work through catastrophe after catastrophe. TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Cold Open — A World With No Trees 1:05 Background: Older Than Forests 2:30 The Myth: "Unchanged for 400 Million Years" 4:10 The Second Wipeout: Dinosaurs Weren't the Only Victims 5:50 The Traits That Kept Winning the Lottery 7:10 Why Didn't Evolution Build One Perfect Shark? 8:20 The Bigger Idea: A Relay Race, Not a Statue 9:50 Closing Sources referenced include Guinot et al. (2013, Nature Communications) on the 120-million-year cladodontomorph gap, and Bazzi et al. (2021, PLOS Biology) and related 2023 research on shark and ray extinction selectivity across the K-Pg boundary. #Sharks #Evolution #Paleontology #NaturalSelection #MassExtinction Subscribe to Evolution's Blueprint for more stories about how specific traits evolved — told as narrative documentary deep-dives.