Cold-case files: Archaeologists discover 3,000-year-old victim of shark attack

While examining the skeletal remains of a prehistoric hunter-gatherer cemetery in Japan dating back some 3,000 years, University of Oxford archaeologists found distinctive evidence that one such skeleton had been the victim of a fatal shark attack. Through a process of elimination, we ruled out human conflict and more commonly-reported animal predators or scavengers."The team quickly realized the injuries were similar to those left by shark attacks on both modern and archaeological remains. Other bone-related evidence of a shark attack includes punctures, gouges, and fractures from the sheer force exerted by powerful jaws, and overlapping serrated (for white, bull, and tiger sharks) striations caused by the teeth scraping across the bone.These were the types of trauma the authors found on Tsukumo No. 24 during their examination, which involved creating 3D distribution maps of the injuries and comparing them to the photographs and CT scans of the skeleton. He probably died between 1370 to 1010 BC."Given the injuries, he was clearly the victim of a shark attack," said White and Schulting.