Resurrecting the Shark

by Susan Ewing

Overview

A prehistoric mystery. A fossil so mesmerizing that it boggled the minds of scientists for more than a century—until a motley crew of modern day shark fanatics decided to try to bring the monster-predator back to life.

In 1993, Alaskan artist and paleo-shark enthusiast Ray Troll stumbled upon the weirdest fossil he had ever seen—a platter-sized spiral of tightly wound shark teeth. This chance encounter in the basement of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County sparked Troll’s obsession with Helicoprion, a mysterious monster from deep time.

In 2010, tattooed undergraduate student and returning Iraq War veteran Jesse Pruitt became seriously smitten with a Helicoprion fossil in a museum basement in Idaho. These two bizarre-shark disciples found each other, and an unconventional band of collaborators grew serendipitously around them, determined to solve the puzzle of the mysterious tooth whorl once and for all.

Helicoprion was a Paleozoic chondrichthyan about the size of a modern great white shark, with a circular saw of teeth centered in its lower jaw—a feature unseen in the shark world before or since. For some ten million years, long before the Age of Dinosaurs, Helicoprion patrolled the shallow seas around the supercontinent Pangaea as the apex predator of its time.

Just a few tumultuous years after Pruitt and Troll met, imagination, passion, scientific process, and state-of-the-art technology merged into an unstoppable force that reanimated the remarkable creature—and made important new discoveries.

In this groundbreaking book, Susan Ewing reveals these revolutionary insights into what Helicoprion looked like and how the tooth whorl functioned—pushing this dazzling and awe-inspiring beast into the spotlight of modern science.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681773438
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	04/04/2017
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Susan Ewing is the author of The Great Alaska Nature Factbook, The Great Rocky Mountain Nature Factbook, and Going Wild in Washington and Oregon, as well as two children’s books. Her nonfiction articles and essays have appeared in Salon, Pacific Standard, Outside Bozeman, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Big Sky Journal, The Seattle Times, and other publications. Born and raised in Kentucky, she graduated from University of Alaska-Fairbanks and now lives in Bozeman, Montana.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Lasting Impressions 5

2 The Shark Bites 21

3 Right Shark, Wrong Name 45

4 First, Cousins 61

5 Whorl Of Fortune 75

6 Karpinsky Makes The Call: Helicoprion 95

7 A Shiver Of Sharks 109

8 Signs Of Life 125

9 The Art Of Obsession 143

10 The New Guard 161

11 Resurrection, One Slice At A Time 177

12 Coming To Terms 195

13 To The Summit And Beyond 213

14 Shark Is A Verb 243

Epilogue 255

Acknowledgments 257

Endnotes 259

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

02/13/2017
Ewing (The Great Alaska Nature Factbook), a nature writer and children’s author, shares the century-long story of scientific investigation that resulted in the discovery of Helicoprion, “one of the largest predatory fish in the global oceans, the top of the food chain for ten to fifteen million years.” Since the 1880s, when a bizarre fossil of what appeared to be a prehistoric shark was found in Australia, scientists have been attempting to figure out what this animal looked like and how it functioned. The fossil itself was so confusing—a round plate with whorls of “fourteen serrated points”—that the world’s best paleontologists argued for years over whether the points were fish-spines or teeth. The whorl of points turned out to be a single curved tooth fixed to the fish’s bottom jaw, much like a buzz saw. Ewing focuses on the group that solved the problem in 2013 while also providing accessible background material on basic geology, paleontology, taxonomy, and the scientific method. The details of shark anatomy can feel overwhelming, but Ewing brings to life the personalities of those who wrestled with these fossils to reveal “the beautiful, frustrating, addictive, rewarding way” that research works. Agent: Laurie Abkemeier, DeFiore and Company. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Ewing’s talent for narrative makes the story of the diverse players a sure page-turner."

Natural History

"A rocking good detective story with geology, art, and sharks!"

David R. Montgomery

"A wonderful book that traces the history of the discovery of the Helicoprion, the 'Buzzsaw Shark,' one of the strangest vertebrate fossils ever to come to light. Susan Ewing travels through 400 million years of fish evolution and four hundred years of scientific research. Entertaining and filled with panorama of eccentric scientists, rock hunters, and artists who have fallen under the spell of this huge predator."

John A. Musick

"Susan Ewing traces how the Helicoprion fossil obsessed scientists for centuries, and how new research could resolve how its teeth fit into its jaw."

Nature

"Long before nature writer Susan Ewing mentions Indiana Jones in Resurrecting the Shark, readers are ensnared in a quest for a 270 million-year-old fish fossil that feels like riding shotgun with Indy. Meticulously researched and spanning numerous disciplines, along with a ‘rockin' lot’ of evolution, Resurrecting the Shark is the compelling saga of how an ancient ocean oddity became a global passion project."

Shelf Awareness

"A fascinating deep-dive into the life and times of Helicoprion, a whorl-toothed shark from the Paleozoic past. Susan Ewing applies liberal doses of humor and enthusiasm to spin a compelling tale that neatly blends history of science, visual art, and modern paleontological research to recreate this once-mysterious animal and its kin."

Anthony J. Martin

A wonderful book that traces the history of the discovery of theHelicoprion,the 'Buzzsaw Shark,' one of the strangest vertebrate fossils ever to come to light. Susan Ewing travels through 400 million years of fish evolution and four hundred years of scientific research. Entertaining and filled with panorama of eccentric scientists, rock hunters, and artists who have fallen under the spell of this huge predator.”

John A. Music

Nature writer Ewing delights in the unusual and has a mischievous sense of humor. Engaging. Sure to delight anyone with a curiosity about the natural world.

Alaska Magazine [praise for Susan Ewing]

Past praise for Susan EwingNature writer Ewing delights in the unusual and has a mischievous sense of humor. Engaging. Sure to delight anyone with a curiosity about the natural world.
”

Alaska Magazine

02/15/2017
A weird creature from deep time comes alive in this engaging account of Helicoprion, the "buzz saw" shark, which patrolled the seas around the supercontinent Gondwana some 270 to 280 million years ago. Since the first fossil fragment was discovered in the 1880s in Australia, a paleontological mystery has centered on the animal's tooth whorl—a feature resembling a circular saw blade, with as many as 150 teeth. As more (and more complete) fossils were found, scientists wrestled with problems concerning the location and mechanics of the whorl and with questions about where (or if) the animal fit into sharks' evolutionary tree. While the shark itself fascinates, Ewing (Great Alaska Nature Factbook) tells an equally interesting story about the development of paleontology, highlighting its important early contributors. The fossil riddle was finally solved a few years back by a crack team of scientists, an engineer, and an artist—yes, an artist: Alaskan painter and self-described "paleo fish-freak" Ray Troll, who not only pictured the fabulous beast but also was a catalyst in assembling the players and, evidently, in powering the effort. VERDICT Ewing blows the dust off dry scientific reportage with her lively style and wit. Her book should have broad appeal to a wide range of readers—sharks, of course, are a cultural phenomenon, and paleo sharks only double the fun.—Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont.

Library Journal

2017-02-07
Excavating the history of the "one-in-a-billion buzz saw shark."Ewing (The Great Alaska Nature Factbook: A Guide to the State's Remarkable Animals, Plants, and Natural Features, 2011 etc.) begins her complex, excessively detailed tale with the invitation by an artist friend, Ray Troll, to attend an exhibit titled "The Whorl Tooth Sharks of Idaho," which featured his work. The author was captivated by a life-size reconstruction on exhibit at the museum featuring a "bizarre extinct shark, Helicoprion," a prehistoric creature that hunted the oceans some 270 to 280 million years ago. Ewing describes the fossil as a "big brown slab of rock" that was "about the size of a bicycle wheel" and bore the imprint of a logarithmic spiral. In 1993, while conducting research, Troll, a "paleo-fish enthusiast," had visited the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and became intrigued by the Helicoprion fossil he found in the basement; he began sketching his vision of how the now-extinct shark might have looked when it was alive. Another fossil was discovered in 2010 in the basement of the Idaho Museum of Natural History by an Idaho State student who was cataloging Ice Age mammals. Ewing relates that find to an earlier discovery of the Helicoprion in the 1880s, which occurred in Russia and was described in an 1899 monograph. The author labels this the dawn of the discipline of paleoecology, when researchers established "the geological ground rule that unique fossil sets in rock layers succeed one another." The fossil set off a debate among scientists about what the fossil represented, "a spiral of teeth" or "a fin spine." By 1905, there were 44 scholarly papers from the United States, Russia, Europe, and Japan that contributed to the debate; in 1912, it was ultimately resolved in favor of the teeth hypothesis. A carefully annotated scientific detective story that suffers from an overabundance of detail but benefits from 24 pages of lively photos.

Kirkus Reviews

Ewing’s talent for narrative makes the story of the diverse players a sure page-turner.

Natural History

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