Crossing the line between natural history and pop culture, modern sharks, and their relatives the rays, feature heavily in books and documentaries, but their evolution and fossil history is a relatively overlooked subject (with one exception – the famous Megalodon, movie star and giant shark par excellence). Sharks have been around for a very long time – the group is 200 million years older than the earliest dinosaurs – but their evolution is only patchily understood. This is because their fossils are rare, as rather than bone their bodies are supported by cartilage, which preserves poorly. That said, shark teeth are common in the fossil record, as they are virtually indestructible, and sharks produce thousands of them in a lifetime.It’s hard to work out how ancient sharks and rays were related and how they evolved because researchers usually have only teeth to work with, but there are exceptions. Certain fossil sites have produced wonderful fossils of sharks, and they reveal an incredible array of often bizarre animals that are hard to imagine as sharks at all. The whorl-toothed and buzzsaw sharks, the anvil-headed sharks, the giant mega-toothed sharks, freshwater sharks with bodies like eels or that lived on the seabed like modern stonefish, even sharks with wings like flying fish.This book celebrates the ancient ancestors of the sharks that we know so well today. It highlights the best-known fossil sharks and rays, taking the reader into a world they may be completely unfamiliar with.The book includes forty species, with Charlene de Silva’s text covering everything that’s known about each shark, accompanied by a main illustration and accompanying artwork by the brilliant Steve White.This richly illustrated book is packed with exciting information, plugging a gap in what most wildlife enthusiasts, dinophiles and even shark-lovers know about the history of this mighty undersea group.