Is This Evidence Of One of the Earliest Known Shark Attacks?
Sharks aren’t as scary as pop culture would have you believe, but they’ve still always been dangerous marine predators.
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00:00Despite many people's irrational fear of sharks, they are not really that dangerous
00:08to humans.
00:09But apparently, according to a new investigation of 3,000-year-old human remains, not every
00:13encounter with sharks throughout history has been so benign.
00:16These bones were found in the early 20th century at a dig site near the Seto Inland Sea in
00:20Japan.
00:21The researchers say he has almost 800 wounds from sharks, wounds that researchers say show
00:25no signs of healing, meaning they were fatal.
00:28But until recently, archaeologists were unsure what caused the serrated skeletal injuries,
00:32now believed to be from a shark attack.
00:34The University of Oxford researchers had this to say about the findings.
00:38We were initially flummoxed by what could have caused at least 790 deep serrated injuries
00:42to this man.
00:43There were so many injuries and yet he was buried in the community burial ground, the
00:47Tsukumo Shell Mound Cemetery Site.
00:49That's because the wounds didn't match any of the stone tools known to have been
00:52in the area at the time, and the body was buried partially dismembered.
00:56Which is why the archaeologists surmised it could be a shark.
00:59Reaching out to shark expert from the Florida Museum of Natural History's Florida Program
01:03for Shark Research, George Burgess, who confirmed it was indeed the work of one of the marine
01:07predators and further identified the injuries as being from a tiger shark.