Scientists have discovered the fossil of a huge shark, which used to live in shallow seas 100 million years ago.

The authors of the discovery said that the huge shark, also known as Leptostyrax macrorhiza, would have been among the largest predators of that time. Its discovery is a challenge for the scientific community when it comes to earlier estimates of when such extremely large sharks would have developed.

In 2009, Janessa A. Doucette-Frederickson found what she thought was a rock when a dig in the Duck Creek Formation of Texas was being explored by her. After that she examined the thing with co-researcher Joseph Frederickson to discover that it was in fact a massive fossil.

Kenshu Shimada, a paleobiologist at DePaul University in Chicago, it’s not sure that the new vertebrae belonged to Leptostyrax.

According to Shimada, who was not involved in the current study, “It is also entirely possible that they may belong to an extinct shark with very small teeth so far not recognized in the present fossil record. For example, some of the largest modern-day sharks are plankton-feeding forms with minute teeth, such as the whale shark”.

Earlier, researchers thought that the only truly huge predators of that time were the fearsomepliosaurs, long-necked relatives to current lizards, able to grow to about 40 feet (12 m) in length. As per researchers, apparently, the oceans were loaded with sufficient life to support at least two main predators.