Fossils of oldest ever shark attack victim discovered in Japan, dating back 3,000 years

Scientists have discovered the oldest recorded shark attack in the world in the Seto Inland sea of the Japanese archipelago. A 3,000-year-old victim’s fossil from early 20th century CE with over 790 wounds on his skeleton was excavated at the Tsukumo Shell-mound by archaeologists at the University of Oxford. The findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. The fully preserved fossil shows the earliest direct evidence for a shark attack on a human as it depicts very deep gashes of wounds which are V-shaped and other injuries on the legs, chest, abdomen as well as the arms that appear in likened of that inflicted with a sharp metal object. 

"We were initially flummoxed by what could have caused at least 790 deep, serrated injuries to this man," said researchers J. Alyssa White and Rick Schulting in a joint statement released by the University of Oxford on June 24. "There were so many injuries and yet he was buried in the community burial ground, the Tsukumo Shell-mound cemetery site,” they added. 

It was through the process of elimination that the scientists ruled out the possibility of human conflict or predatory land animal attack. They concluded that the gashes of the deep wound were caused by either a tiger or white shark after the team carefully recreated the incident. The archaeologists were investigating the evidence for violent trauma on the skeletal remains of prehistoric hunter-gatherers at Kyoto University when they found these human adult remains with injuries at the site of Tsukumo. The researchers turned to forensic shark attack cases for clues and answers, as they also worked with expert George Burgess, Director Emeritus of the Florida Program for Shark Research.  

Man died between 1370 to 1010 BC

The team found that the man had died from 1370 to 1010 BC. “The distribution of wounds strongly suggest the victim was alive at the time of the attack; his left hand was sheared off, possibly a defence wound,” the team of scientists investigating the fossil labelled as “No 24” said. They also concluded that the man may have been buried at the cemetery. “Given the injuries, he was clearly the victim of a shark attack based on the character and distribution of the tooth marks, the most likely species responsible was either a tiger or white shark,” the pair of scientists said. Co-author Dr Mark Hudson, a researcher with the Max Planck Institute, meanwhile stated that Neolithic people of Jomon Japan exploited a range of marine resources and it is not yet clear if the mauled male adult was targeted by sharks or was used as a bait to attract the fishes for blood.