Description

Late Paleocene

Ouled Abdoun Basin, Phosphate Deposits

Morocco

Very good 0.9 inch Some chipped serrates.

Shark.  Cretoxyrhinidae.

Palaeocarcharodon is an extinct shark that appeared early in the Paleocene – not too long after the K/T extinction that not only killed off the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles but also all the large shark genera.  It would become one of the largest sharks of the Paleocene but it died out at the end of the epoch.

Palaeocarcharodon appears to have descended from an undetermined species of, or relative of, Cretalamna.  It was once considered the ancestor of great white sharks but it is now considered an evolutionary dead-end that left no modern relatives.