Fossil record has shown that the genus Carcharias and probably species C. taurus Rafinesque, 1810 occupied the western coast of South America during the Miocene and part of the Pliocene. The genus is absent in the area today. It is suggested that its local extinction was the consequence of a drop of global temperatures during the middle Pliocene and Pleistocene and the coeval lowering of sea level that shrinked the area of distribution to the northern areas and provoked the disappearance of suitable environments when the shelf area became extremely reduced. After approximately 3 Ma it would have not been possible for the species to migrate from the north to the region due to the establishment of the Panamanian isthmusBIG SHARKS THAT SWIM BETWEEN THE SOUTH-AMERICAN -AFRICAN RIFT 110 TO 100 MILLION YEARS AGO OR BEFORE THE MESSIAH GROW IN NUMBERS BY ADAPTATIVE RADIATION BEFORE THE BIG METEOR CRUNCH AND SOMEHOW SOMEHERE SURVIVE TILL NOW

OLIGOCENE DROUGHT 

OBIK SEA GO BUST ....

MIOCENE ...CRUSH BETWEEN EUROPE 

AND AFRICA  17 MEGAYEARS AGO

MEDITERRANEAN OR PARATETHYS 

SHARK   EXTINCTION

NOTHING NEW ....IT HAPPENS

Neoselachians sharks are included in the class

Chondrichthyes, a very ancient clade which perhaps

ranges from the Ordovician but certainly from the

Devonian. Sharks, very important fishes in the economy of the sea today, include the most ancient

vertebrate recent genera. A family of relatively large

sharks, Odontaspididae, is known since the Aptian

(early Cretaceous;

Carcharias

striatula

Today it includes the

genera

Odontaspis

Agassiz, 1838 and

Carcharias.

Genus

Carcharias

is monospecific today but it had

several fossil species (Cappetta, 1987). Recent

species

C. taurus

(Rafinesque, 1810) is wide-ranging

in warm-temperate and tropical coastal waters of the

Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Indo-West

Pacific Ocean but is absent from the Central Pacific and

eastern Pacific oceans However, the fossil record has

shown that the distribution of the genus

Carcharias

and possibly the species

C. taurus

occupied the

western coast of South America during the Miocene

and at least part of the Pliocene. The World Conservation Union considers

C. taurus

as a vulnerable

species today, with its populations seriously depleted

(Compagno, 2001). It is critically endangered in New

South Wales, Australia, after large numbers were

killed in sports and commercial fisheries and by divers

described several cases of extirpation of fishes in the

Atlantic Ocean.  the occurrence of genus

Carcharias in the eastern Pacific is reviewed and a

hypothesis for explaining its local extinction is

proposed