Cretoxyrhina mantelli (Agassiz 1843) is an extinct species of shark belonging to the family Cretoxyrhinidae. It was one of the largest sharks and a formidable predator in the Late Cretaceous seas, reaching lengths of up to 6.5 to 7 meters (about 22 feet). Nicknamed the Ginsu shark, Cretoxyrhina ripped apart prey with a mouth full of razor-sharp, bone-shearing teeth. Evidence suggests Cretoxyrhina fed on mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and even the giant bony fish Xiphactinus audax, a fierce predator itself. Despite its fearsome size and armament, C. mantelli did not survive for long, becoming extinct by about 90 million years ago.
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| - Cretoxyrhina mantelli (Agassiz 1843) is an extinct species of shark belonging to the family Cretoxyrhinidae. It was one of the largest sharks and a formidable predator in the Late Cretaceous seas, reaching lengths of up to 6.5 to 7 meters (about 22 feet). Nicknamed the Ginsu shark, Cretoxyrhina ripped apart prey with a mouth full of razor-sharp, bone-shearing teeth. Evidence suggests Cretoxyrhina fed on mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and even the giant bony fish Xiphactinus audax, a fierce predator itself. Despite its fearsome size and armament, C. mantelli did not survive for long, becoming extinct by about 90 million years ago.
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| - Cretoxyrhina mantelli - "Ginsu shark", from Late Cretaceous of Kansas
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| - Cretoxyrhina mantelli (Agassiz 1843) is an extinct species of shark belonging to the family Cretoxyrhinidae. It was one of the largest sharks and a formidable predator in the Late Cretaceous seas, reaching lengths of up to 6.5 to 7 meters (about 22 feet). Nicknamed the Ginsu shark, Cretoxyrhina ripped apart prey with a mouth full of razor-sharp, bone-shearing teeth. Evidence suggests Cretoxyrhina fed on mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and even the giant bony fish Xiphactinus audax, a fierce predator itself. Despite its fearsome size and armament, C. mantelli did not survive for long, becoming extinct by about 90 million years ago. There have been a number of instances where the fossilized remains of mosasaurs are all that remained of some sort of feeding activity. In some cases, there were embedded pieces of teeth from the large lamnid shark, Cretoxyrhina mantelli. In one well documented specimen (FHSM VP-13283), there were embedded Cretoxyrhina teeth, two vertebrae that had been bitten completely through, and the evidence of partial digestion (Shimada, 1997; Everhart, 1999).
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