Shark populations have been decimated in recent decades because of overfishing and other anthropogenic stressors; however, the long-term impacts of such changes in marine predator abundance and diversity are poorly constrained. We present evidence for a previously unknown major extinction event in sharks that occurred in the early Miocene, ~19 million years ago. During this interval, sharks virtually disappeared from open-ocean sediments, declining in abundance by >90% and morphological diversity by >70%, an event from which they never recovered. This abrupt extinction occurred independently from any known global climate event and ~2 million to 5 million years before diversifications in the highly migratory, large-bodied predators that dominate pelagic ecosystems today, indicating that the early Miocene was a period of rapid, transformative change for open-ocean ecosystems.

近几十年来，由于过度捕捞和其他人为压力因素，鲨鱼数量大幅减少；然而，海洋捕食者丰富度和多样性的这种变化的长期影响并没有受到很好的限制。我们提供了大约 1900 万年前发生在中新世早期的鲨鱼大灭绝事件的证据。在此期间，鲨鱼几乎从公海沉积物中消失了，数量下降了 90% 以上，形态多样性下降了 70% 以上，而他们再也没有从这一事件中恢复过来。这种突然灭绝的发生独立于任何已知的全球气候事件，并且在当今主导远洋生态系统的高度迁徙的大型捕食者多样化之前约 200 万至 500 万年，表明早中新世是一个快速、