A barren stretch of Egypt’s Western Desert has yielded an unexpected glimpse into a prehistoric ocean, with scientists uncovering fossilised shark teeth belonging to five extinct species that lived during the Late Cretaceous, when dinosaurs still dominated the planet. The discovery comes from the Abu-Tartur Plateau in southwestern Egypt, an area that today is an extremely arid landscape but was once covered by a warm tropical sea. The study ‘ Egyptian shark graveyard: New Late Cretaceous Lamniform shark assemblage from Duwi Formation of Abu-Tartur Area, Southwestern Desert, Egypt ,’ published in 2026 in Cretaceous Research, describes a new assemblage of Late Cretaceous lamniform sharks from the phosphate-rich Duwi Formation. The research was led by Tarek Yassin of Cairo University, together with Jorge D. Carrillo-Briceño, René Kindlimann, Alhussein Ibrahim and Mohamed K. AbdelGawad. According to the researchers, the fossils provide new evidence of shark diversity in the ancient tropical seas of North Africa.
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