London - These days it’s more like a concrete jungle, but scientists believe that 300million years ago Doncaster was a water-logged tropical forest – infested by sharks.
Researchers who sifted through debris from local coal mines found fossils including the soft “shell” of a shark’s egg, horseshoe crabs and types of plant which would have grown more than 100ft high.
The shark egg case was exquisitely preserved in waste from the now defunct Yorkshire Main Colliery.
The fossils, from a time 80 million years before the first dinosaurs, suggest a tropical rainforest alive with wildlife, like the Brazilian Amazon today.
Manchester University palaeontologist Dean Lomax, author of Dinosaurs Of The British Isles, said: “We are still sifting through the debris. An actual shark would be very nice. We are going to keep looking.” - Daily Mail