Researchers name prehistoric shark after retiring LSU museum official

Researchers have named a prehistoric shark, Carcharhinus tingae, after a retiring official at Louisiana State University’s Museum of Natural Science, The Associated Press reported. 

South Carolina State’s David Cicimurri and McWane Science Center’s Jun Ebersole named the shark after Suyin Ting, who served as the collections manager for vertebrate paleontology at LSU for 26 years.

The Carcharhinus tingae lived over 40 million years ago and was identified from fossilized teeth in the museum’s collection, the AP reported. 

In a statement, Ting praised Cicimurri’s and Ebersole’s contribution to the museum’s vertebrate paleontology collection, and said she was honored that they named their most recent discovery after her.

“I am very honored to be recognized by my peers for my work,” Ting said in a news release. 

Cicimurri and Ebersole spent two days at the museum last year photographing specimens and gathering information, according to The AP. 

The researchers were able to identify much of the material after spending months studying teeth and comparing them to those of other fossils and modern-day sharks.

“We were able to determine that the fossil species was closely related to modern requiem sharks, so we used jaws of modern species to reconstruct how the teeth were arranged in the mouth of the extinct species,” Cicimurri said in a statement.