• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Lost Prairie Press

Lost Prairie Press

Trending News from the Midwest - IA, IL, KS, MO, NE

  • Home
  • MIDWEST
  • ILLINOIS
  • IOWA
  • KANSAS
  • MISSOURI
  • NEBRASKA
  • About Us
    • Contact Us

Two Bull Sharks Swam Up the Mississippi River All the Way to St. Louis

A bull shark in Thailand in 2014.

Bull sharks are coastal creatures, but at least two of the animals were able to make it as far inland as St. Louis by swimming up the Mississippi River, according to a team of researchers who looked at the shark’s fossil record and reported sightings over the years.

The research duo—Ryan Shell, a paleontologist at the Cincinnati Museum Center and Nicholas Gardner, a librarian at WVU Potomac State College with degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology—scrutinized hundreds of reports of sharks in the Mississippi River and compared those historical records with archaeological and paleontological evidence for bull sharks moving in those waterways in the distant past. Their results were published in the journal Marine & Fishery Sciences.

“I believe Ryan mentioned something like ‘hey, bull sharks can go up the Mississippi,’ and my first thought was, ‘bull****,’” Gardner wrote in an email.

St. Louis, Missouri, abuts the Mississippi River.

St. Louis, Missouri, abuts the Mississippi River.Photo: Daniel SLIM / AFP (Getty Images)

The sharks are known to make forays into freshwater beyond the African, Asian, Australian, and American coasts they inhabit, and the fossil record holds evidence of bull sharks in the river, but not in its upper basin. Some teeth are found inland, but not in natural fossil beds and in association with teeth from other species, suggesting they may have been traded inland.

G/O Media may get a commission

No sightings are documented before the turn of the 20th century, but Shell and Gardner found two confirmed bull shark catches in the historical record: One in 1937, in Alton, Illinois, and another just outside of St. Louis in 1995. The 1937 shark was an 84-pounder and about 5 feet long, according to contemporary reporting by the Alton Evening Telegraph, which said the fish got stuck in a fisherman’s seine. The 1995 specimen was retrieved from the screen of a power plant intake canal, according to a 2004 report on the waterway’s ecology; the same report ascribed both the 1937 and 1995 events to waif, or accidental, one-off wandering fish.

Besides those, the sighting record is littered with incomplete or erroneous reports, which often were parroted from news source to news source. These piggybacked sightings made up the majority of the reports Shell and Gardner examined.

“Anybody with computer access can make an authoritative looking website, and if someone doesn’t do the due diligence they need to do, boom, misinformation slips in,” Gardner said. “We dealt with the biology side as best we can, now I’m curious about what drives hoaxes, misidentifications, and more.”

The lack of bull shark fossil evidence in freshwater deposits could mean that the sharks’ venturing into freshwater is a relatively recent development in their behavior. More likely, the researchers believe, occasional ventures into the freshwater have been a habit of the creature for millions of years, but it’s just not been seen in the fossil record. Their third theory is that venturing into the Mississippi is so uncommon for the fish that the two caught specimens can be viewed as anomalous events.

Whatever the ancestral case, Gardner is hopeful that environmental DNA (called eDNA for short) can help scientists figure out just how common the behavior is. eDNA allows biologists to sample water, soil, and even air to learn what organisms live in that environment, based on the microscopic amounts of genetic information that fall off animals as they move through their habitat.

More: Here’s What Sharks Do When You Give Them Cameras

###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here

Filed Under: MISSOURI, St Louis News

Primary Sidebar

More to See

7-things-to-do-this-weekend-in-kc:-may-19-22-2022

7 Things To Do This Weekend In KC: May 19-22 2022

Jacob Collier Jacob Collier is coming to The Truman this Thursday night. This event has been rescheduled from May 2020, and resellers seemed to have marked up ticket prices quite a bit. But trust … [Read More...] about 7 Things To Do This Weekend In KC: May 19-22 2022

City welcomes new chief human resources officer

Posted on May 19, 2022 The City of Overland Park welcomes a new Human Resources Department leader, following a national search. Thomas Bledsoe comes to the City from … [Read More...] about City welcomes new chief human resources officer

korean-street-food-and-house-brewed-soju-coming-to-westport

Korean street food and house-brewed soju coming to Westport

Food from the upcoming Westport Korean restaurant Chingu/Photo by Alyssa Broadu Chingu, a new Westport spot from the team behind Sura eats, will combine Korean street food and soju … [Read More...] about Korean street food and house-brewed soju coming to Westport

a-recent-trip-to-new-york-reminded-me-just-how-much-kansas-city-jazz-has-to-offer

A recent trip to New York reminded me just how much Kansas City jazz has to offer

Photography by Caleb Condit & Rebecca Norden “There’s a common myth that Kansas City jazz ended with World War II,” local jazz historian and author Chuck Haddix says. While the … [Read More...] about A recent trip to New York reminded me just how much Kansas City jazz has to offer

a-local-group-works-with-survivors-of-violence-to-break-the-cycle

A local group works with survivors of violence to break the cycle

Illustration by Makalah Hardy Almost every day, Marquell Harris visits two hospitals: Research Medical Center and Truman. And almost every day, he sees new survivors of gunshot … [Read More...] about A local group works with survivors of violence to break the cycle

Footer

WELCOME!

Thanks for visiting Lost Prairie Press!

We hope you’ll enjoy news and perspective from the Midwest – specifically, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas and Missouri.

About/Contact

Privacy Policy

Recent

  • 7 Things To Do This Weekend In KC: May 19-22 2022
  • City welcomes new chief human resources officer
  • Korean street food and house-brewed soju coming to Westport

Search

Copyright © 2022 · Lost Prairie Press