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.

Transcript

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.