Sharks Are Older Than Trees: Here Is How That Is Possible

Sharks Older Than Trees: Nature is full of fascinating facts and unique revelations. One such phenomenon is that sharks are older than trees. The concept seems unusual; however, there is a logical reasoning behind the belief that wild sharks are even older than the epitome of nature.

Well before the massive forests laid their roots down, sharks had already populated Earth's ancient oceans. Their unparalleled survival history spans hundreds of millions of years and cements them as one of nature's longest-living creatures. Sharks predate trees—an incredible fact that underscores the long evolutionary history of these very old marine predators.

The group as a whole, sharks have existed for roughly 420 million years, before the very first trees materialised on the planet, which only happened somewhere around 350 million years ago. How is this so?

When Did Sharks Come To Earth?

The first sharks appeared in the oceans of the Devonian Period, also known as the "Age of Fishes." They endured several mass extinctions and developed into the array of species we know today, according to John Long’s 1995 book “The Rise of Fishes: 500 Million Years of Evolution.”

When Did Trees Come To Earth?

Trees, defined biologically as large woody plants with one main stem, did not show up until afterwards, in the late Devonian era. The earliest documented tree-like plants, including Archaeopteris, consisted of ancient forests that started to envelop land around 350 million years ago. All this is due to the struggle for life on land. There was intense UV light from the Sun, little water, large temperature fluctuations, and intense earthquakes. Due to these issues, trees and other terrestrial animals took millions of years to evolve, based on Jennifer Clack's 2012 book Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods.

Also Read: 50+ Motivational Quotes To Save Trees On National Tree Day 2025

How Sharks Are Older Than Trees? 

This chronology made it seem that sharks patrolled ancient oceans about 50 million years earlier than the emergence of the earliest trees. Sharks are members of the class Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fishes), and their evolutionary history is traced to jawed fishes that lived ages before forests arose on land. Trees needed stable conditions on land and complex root systems in order to evolve, situations that took centuries to develop after the land first broke up from the seas.

Outside of evolutionary timelines, there are a few shark species with extremely long lifespans, like the Greenland shark, which lives more than 400 years. Trees tell their own age in growth rings, a frequently used dating technique that tallies annual cycles of wood created as the tree matures.

Also Read: Which Is the Largest Animal On Earth? Its Tongue Weighs More Than An Elephant

In short, sharks are older than trees by millions of years since they first evolved in ancient oceans, whereas trees evolved much later as terrestrial adaptations of the land plants. This incredibly baffling fact highlights the fact that sharks are one of the most ancient uninterrupted vertebrate lineages on Earth, a living proof of the past of our planet. Their early origins have helped them to survive when countless other species have become extinct in today’s time, showcasing the sharks’ incredible resilience throughout the changing history of our planet.