The rock samples containing the shark teeth were collected during a field campaign in the Northern Calcareous Alps in Upper Austria near Ternberg. The tiny teeth and dermal denticles, which are all smaller than a pinhead, were extracted from the limestone by using acetic acid. They were then analysed with a high resolution scanning electron microscope. This detailed analysis provided interesting details of the tooth morphology, which confirms the presence of five new genera including six new species that were previously unknown from the deep marine sediments of the Tethys Ocean. The accompanying dermal denticles, which serve as skin protection, further hint at a significantly higher diversity of sharks during the Early Cretaceous in Austria than previously known.
 
The teeth of the newly described shark species are stored in the collection of the Natural History Museum Vienna and the “Geowissenschaftliche Sammlung OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH”.
 
 
Link to the articles:
 
Feichtinger I., Lukeneder A. & Guinot G. 2020: A Lower Cretaceous chondrichthyan dermal denticle assemblage and its bearing on placoid scale diversity and histology. Cretaceous Research 111 (104444).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195667119304860
 
Feichtinger I., Engelbrecht A., Lukeneder A. & Kriwet J. 2020. New chondrichthyans characterised by cladodontlike tooth morphologies from the Early Cretaceous of Austria, with remarks on the microstructural diversity of enameloid. Historical Biology 32 (6), pp. 823–836.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08912963.2018.1539971
 
Fuchs I., Engelbrecht A., Lukeneder A. & Kriwet J. 2018: New Early Cretaceous sharks (Chondrichthyes, Elasmobranchii) from deep-water deposits of Austria. Cretaceous Research 84, pp.245-257.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195667117303543