Resurrecting the Shark: A Scientific Obsession and the Mavericks Who Solved the Mystery of a 270-Million-Year-Old Fossil

by Susan Ewing

In 1993, Alaskan artist and paleo-shark enthusiast Ray Troll stumbled upon the weirdest fossil he had ever seen—a platter-sized spiral of tightly wound shark teeth. This chance encounter in the basement of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County sparked Troll’s obsession with Helicoprion, a mysterious monster from deep time.


In 2010, tattooed undergraduate student and returning Iraq War veteran Jesse Pruitt became seriously smitten with a Helicoprion fossil in a museum basement in Idaho. These two bizarre-shark disciples found each other, and an unconventional band of collaborators grew serendipitously around them, determined to solve the puzzle of the mysterious tooth whorl once and for all.


Helicoprion was a Paleozoic chondrichthyan about the size of a modern great white shark, with a circular saw of teeth centered in its lower jaw—a feature unseen in the shark world before or since. For some ten million years, long before the Age of Dinosaurs, Helicoprion patrolled the shallow seas around the supercontinent Pangaea as the apex predator of its time.


Just a few tumultuous years after Pruitt and Troll met, imagination, passion, scientific process, and state-of-the-art technology merged into an unstoppable force that reanimated the remarkable creature—and made important new discoveries.


In this groundbreaking book, Susan Ewing reveals these revolutionary insights into what Helicoprion looked like and how the tooth whorl functioned—pushing this dazzling and awe-inspiring beast into the spotlight of modern science.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Palaeontology, Natural History, History, Nature, Biology

282 pages, Hardcover

Published April 4, 2017

About the author

My two greatest joys as a kid were riding my bike and reading books. Both offered escape and adventure—my bike took me flying out into the physical world, while books were the bridge to an inner world of emotion and ideas. I came to writing as way to hold the physical world like a bird in my hands, so I could see more clearly, feel more deeply, and understand more completely. And because in those moments when writing works, it’s magic.

I was born and raised in Kentucky, but wandered west soon after graduating high school. I lived in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest for many years, rotating through a variety of jobs, like working as a bull cook in the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay, commercial salmon fishing in Southeast Alaska, staking mining claims for a geophysical company in the Brooks Range, working in a print shop, and waitressing. Then I got a job as an wildlife information officer, and started writing as part of the job. Something clicked. I loved it. Soon after that I wrote my first book, Going Wild in Washington and Oregon. I was the kid on the bike—thrilled and committed to the ride.

Somewhere in all that I finished my much-interrupted education and graduated with a BA from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. In 1991, I moved to the Gallatin Valley of Montana, which felt like home as soon as I saw the Bridger Mountains on the horizon. My life is at its sweetest equilibrium when I’m out hiking in those mountains with my husband and my dog.

Reviews

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t remember exactly which year it was that I was kind of accidentally introduced to the artwork of Ray Troll. I work on a university campus and occasionally there will be an event which catches my attention that I’ll attend after work. I’m also a paleontology enthusiast, so when I saw a session about fossil fish and I had no other responsibilities for the day, I went. Little did I know, that I was going to become a fan of fin art! Mr. Troll was giving a presentation on his artwork which featured fossil fishes and I was hooked, so to speak.

Ray Troll also ends up being a central character in this history of the understanding of the whorl-toothed shark, Helicoprion. The fossil whorl captivated him and he spent years talking with paleontologists about Paleozoic sharks, trying to accurately illustrate the animal. Because of when he started his quest, he knew the old guard (now deceased) and was able to dispense some of their wisdom to younger researchers (and point them toward appropriate papers). In fact, he seems to have become the fairy godfather of the Helicoprion project, facilitating contact between professionals which might never otherwise have happened.

I would have to say that popular works on paleo-fish research are few and far between and Susan Ewing has written a very enjoyable contribution to the field. She manages to cover all the factual data and still have a sense of humour, as when she describes one researcher using CT scans to “squeeze out every last ounce of sharky goodness.”

I would also encourage you to check out Troll’s webpage and art:

http://www.trollart.com/trollart_topl...

Thank goodness for people like him, who have the passion to pursue these fascinating research projects, being cheerleaders and facilitators.

[Elentarri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helicoprion was an unusual looking Paleozoic shark-type creature, with a circular saw of teeth centered in its lower jaw—a feature unseen in the shark world before or since. For about ten million years this creature swam the shallow seas around the supercontinent Pangaea as the apex predator of its time. Susan Ewing describes the journey of discovery of this fascinating creature, from the first fossil finds to the revolutionary insights into the appearance and eating habits of Helicoprion and how the tooth whorl functioned.

This book was interesting, however all the scientific findings and information relating to Helicoprion was overwhelmed with excessive biographical detail of everybody (and their acquaintances) that had even vague connections with with the Helicoprion fossils. In addition, the narrative was somewhat disjointed with explanatory sections being inserted into the biography sections. The first half of the book was slow, with the story of Helicoprion picking up in the second half. This is where most of the science, fossil analysis and results are discussed, with the description of the scientists' mystery solving escapades positively enlivening.

The book includes many pretty colour illustrations, however these are all dumped at the end of the book with no reference to their relevant place in the text and no indication in the text that there is a useful diagram that fits in that spot. I don't know if this is applicable to the e-book only or also to the hardcover edition. References are supplied in the end notes in that horrible format so common these days.

In short: too much biography, too little science.

NOTE: The book states that there are four augmented reality models, viewable with the "Resurrecting the Shark" app, available on Google Play. However, this app is apparently not compatible with any of the android tablets/phones that various family members possess, at least one of which is brand new.

[Raneem · Rating 3 out of 5]

parts of this were really interesting and parts were totally agonizing to read which is too bad since the subject matter is awesome. at least half of this book is about an illustrator ??? i still don’t understand how that was relevant or what that had to do with the shark.. which spoiler it’s actually not a shark but a fish! and then when it was about science it was so technical but there were no diagrams. bring back picture books! anyway i learned some cool things but mostly i feel like this was full of shenanigans.

one fun fact from this book: victorian scientist william buckland used to eat the animals he was studying and he was aiming to eat every animal on earth. he ate mice on toast and boiled elephant trunk and even part of king louis XVI heart! that’s probably why the russians cracked the mystery of helicoprion faster while those british guys were out here thinking for 100 years that its teeth were on its back🙄

[Corinna Bechko · Rating 4 out of 5]

The world has seen a lot of weird animals, but a shark with one big tooth whorl planted in the middle of its mouth like a buzz saw has got to be one of the oddest, at least as far as vertebrates go. I applaud Susan Ewing for making this creature not just a footnote but the star attraction of an entire book, and I relished the biographical details about the men and women who worked to decode the mystery of how this vanished predator lived, ate, and looked. If bizarre sharks are your cup of tea, read this and rejoice. If they aren't, well, I don't know why you're even reading this review. I mean, have you seen the cover of the book?

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's so incredibly hard to find quality popular science literature on palaeontology; but paleoichthyology - forget about it. Books on ancient fish are harder to find than a fossilised shark skeleton. That's why I was incredibly excited about finding this gem - not just a book about Paleozoic sharks, but one that specifically focuses on the mysterious helicoprion, whose teeth formed a strange whorl formation, puzzling scientists for over a hundred years. While I applaud the author on taking a noble task of bringing the obscure subject to light, I wish I enjoyed the writing more. It was simply too dense for a non-specialist and drowned a bit in the biographical narrative of all scientists involved. I simply found myself zoning out too much, and it's a shame, because the sharks themselves are fascinating.

[Tim Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a well written and engaging popular science book on what might seem a fairly obscure topic; Paleozoic sharks. Or rather, a particular genus of Paleozoic sharks that lived into the middle Permian period, the genus Helicoprion. Not only did the author’s enthusiasm and skill at presenting complex topics to a general audience make the book very readable, but the human saga around the discovery and study of the fossil and as well as the strangeness of the animal itself made this a fast read.

Sometimes popularly called the buzz saw shark, Helicoprion is a strange great white-sized “shadowy harbinger of modern sharks” that was a major ocean predator for about ten million years (between 270 and 280 million years ago, going extinct before the great mass extinction at the end of the Permian period). Though there were other anatomical mysteries surrounding this animal, such as basic general appearance and whether or not it possessed gill slits or something called an opercular cover, far and away the teeth are what intrigued generations of scientists, artists, and amateur enthusiasts, as really nothing else existed like it. They possessed essentially coils of teeth (or rather a singular coil, as for many years it wasn’t even known if Helicoprion possessed more than one coil). Each coil was a rounded spiral putting into many a viewer’s minds the spiral shells of nautiluses or the extinct ammonite. They start small in the center of the spiral where they progressively get larger as they wind their way out from the center until they can be as large as a grown man’s index finger, with teeth numbering upwards of as much as 146. Furthermore the teeth are symphyseal, meaning they are positioned on the center line of the animal, “aligned with the symphysis, or junction, at the front of the jaw where the two sides come together,” basically the center front. On top of all that, the “teeth” fossils aren’t really teeth, as “all those “teeth” were really one tooth with multiple crowns sprouting from a single continuous root.”

For decades to discuss Helicoprion was to discuss the many different theories as to where this spiral went and how many each animal possessed (was it even teeth but rather something on the fin or tail? If it was teeth, were they in the upper jaw, lower jaw, forward, or towards the back?). The mysteries didn’t end with placement. How did the teeth stay centered on the jaw? How much of it protruded from the jaw? What happened as the whorl added new crowns and older ones disappeared into the jaw? How much force did a bite have?

The anatomical mystery wasn’t the only thing that intrigued so many people, as there was no consensus whatsoever for many decades on how the teeth were even used. Were they used to lure ammonite prey (the author pointed out that a “cephalopod would have to be unsuspecting indeed, since the “decoy”…looked like it was caught in the shark’s mouth”)? Did it “use its whorl to plow invertebrates out of the” seafloor? Was it perhaps a squid eater, its whorl used for “grasping prey or tearing off large pieces,” an idea supported by the fact that whale biologists have observed “the fewer the teeth, the greater the percentage of cephalopods in the diet”)? Was it a slashing saw perhaps with a single bite doing the same thing modern sharks do when they shake their heads side to side to saw and cut their food? Did the whorl act to somehow shuck an ammonite from its shell?

The author followed the saga of Helicoprion from the very beginning, that beginning being the discovery of the very first fossil by a gold prospector by the name of Mr. Davis (first name lost to history), who found it in the early 1880s in Western Australia, it being a curved fragment of fourteen teeth. Anyone who had any connection with studying this strange creature was covered, from Fanny Rysam Mulford Hitchcock (a rare female scientist, first to discover that the fossils being found were midline tooth structures) to Alexander Karpinsky (Russian scientist who published a hundred page monograph on the genus and who gave Helicoprion its name, from the Greek helicon or “spiral” and prion or “saw”) to Canadian geologist W.F. Ferrier (who found the first North American specimen) to Ray Troll (not a scientist but rather an artist, important in talking to and becoming familiar with the old guard of Helicoprion researchers and spreading knowledge of their research while also putting together a new guard who eventually solved many of the issues relating to the strange genus) to Jesse Pruitt (former Marine, mechanic, and weightlifter who went into paleontology and, along with Troll, reignited scientific interest in Helicoprion, bringing to the study of the genus a detailed “tooth-by-tooth, volution-by-volution familiarity with individual fossils, and a similar close-focus intimacy with the CT scans” of the fossils) to several others. Along the way the reader got to read how many of the mysteries of Helicoprion were solved, with at the end a Helicoprion dream team of sorts of scanning experts, paleontologists, marine biologists, and artists finally presenting to the world our best view yet of the actual animal, complete with working three-dimensional models.

I liked the compare and contrast of the old guard of Helicoprion experts, showing how paleontology functioned before the modern era and the new guard who used the latest in computer scanning and modeling and interdisciplinary approaches to solving mysteries. I also liked how though far and away Helicoprion was the star, other fossil sharks were discussed and depicted as well.

Well-illustrated with photos and paintings of the fossils, life reconstructions, and the people involved. Extensive endnotes were also provided.

[Lewis Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a boy, there was nothing more than I wanted to do than become a paleontologist - I blame copious rewatching of the original (and undisputed best version) of Walking with Dinosaurs. It's been a while since I felt that level of passion rekindle, and I cannot thank Susan Ewing enough for that. This is a fantastic book, both in terms of a niche history while also as an exciting look into the notorious buzz-saw shark. It's just a lovely book all around honestly. If paleontology was more of a viable option in Australia, I would seriously consider undertaking studies. Alas, I'll stick with reading about it for now

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

As repetitive as it gets you can’t deny the enthusiasm the author has for the subject matter, that comes off the page easily which really got me through till the end.

However as enthusiastic and conversational as it is, it does become a long string of 9 letter, hard to pronounce words towards the end. Still you can’t help but admire the journey this fossil has gone on and the amount of people involved. I naively had no idea so much went into digging up fossils.

Readers of the Lost Shark Book Club pick for November/December 2025

[FireflySeason2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you had told me a week ago I would have some serious opinions about prehistoric sharks I would have called you a loon.

[Loren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super informative, great little story that it followed. Sometimes it did get a little drone-y but not anymoreso than other nonfiction accounts.

[Susan Tweit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Resurrecting the Shark opens with just the facts, in true science fashion: "Scientists estimate that 99.9 percent of all species ever to slink, swim, fly, fight, wail, or warble on this earth are now extinct. "The number of extinct species is thought to be somewhere between five and fifty billion. Billion. Species. Extinct."

But Susan Ewing's astonishment and excitement enliven those bare facts, and the telling of this extraordinary science detective story, propelling readers onward through history, tangled thickets of taxonomy, the politics of fossil collecting and species description, the petty jealousies of competing researchers, and the state-of-the-art technology now used to conjure whole organisms out of a scattering of preserved body parts.

The subject of the mystery itself was no ordinary organism, Ewing points out: "Of those estimated extinguished billions, a random few percent are chronicled in the fossil record. This is the story of one of those few—the one-in-a-billion buzz saw shark, Helicoprion, a species that survived over a span of some ten million years, between about 270 and 280 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs."

Imagine an ancient shark the size of a Great White or larger, only like no shark known today, with a lower jaw dominated by a buzz-saw-blade-like arc of fearsome cutting teeth. Now imagine that the only recognizable bit of this huge and weird shark is the spiral of those giant teeth with nothing else to suggest what they are or to whom they belong. Therein lies the mystery: how do you make a shark out of a fossil that looks nothing like anything on earth today?

Ewing tells a rollicking tale of the fossils that stumped the world's most prominent geologists and paleontologists (including one Fanny Rysam Mulford Hitchcock, that rarest of the rare, a female Victorian scientist), for more than a century. It is Ewing's skill at bringing their personalities and times alive that makes Resurrecting the Shark such a compelling account, both of the evolution of science and of our understanding of earth's past.

The mystery of Heliciprion and its buzz-saw spiral of teeth remained obscure until 2010, when Jesse Pruitt, an inquisitive Iraq War vet and undergraduate student at Idaho State University became intrigued by the school.s collection of the strange spiral fossils. In his quest to figure out the shark the fossils represented Pruitt assembled an oddly assorted team of scientists, virtual reality experts, and Ray Troll, an Alaskan artist with rock star status among scientists for his irreverent but factually correct depictions of marine life. Working together, Team Helicoprion brought the shark to life. Mostly.

Like any good mystery, especially in science, there is still more to figure out about Helicoprion, the weirdest shark to ever swim the oceans. As Ewing writes: "Our planet is a big spinning ball full of enormous amazement and intimate surprise. We can never solve all of its mysteries or know the full scope of its endless, complicated workings. But we can wonder."

Ewing ends this astonishing and fascinating tale of science in action with an invitation for us all to join the quest: "Some say the meek will inherit the earth, but really it's the curious. It's yours for the asking."

[Richard Archambault · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I am particularly thankful for the glimpses of the actual people behind scientific discoveries, their joys and interests and obsessions and quirks. I now have a new appreciation for the people who do science for the sake of Science. It was also fun to imagine all these crazy ancient sharks! I only wish there had been even more illustrations as well as closer pictures of the actual fossils.

[Berry Muhl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evolutionary biology, like any other science, is a sleuthing game. The dictum "form follows function" is the essential guide, used to reverse-engineer behaviors from structures; but when the form fossilizes in an incomplete state (which is virtually always the case with cartilaginous fishes), the function can remain maddeningly obscure for decades, even centuries.

"Shark" is too broad a rubric for the class in question. "Chondricthyes" is the taxon in modern use, a more rigorously-defined group, to be sure; but even as bewildering as its diversity remains today, it was staggeringly more so in the Permian. The "Eugenodontid" chondricthyans, a group which includes the "buzz-saw sharks," had such a dizzying array of jaw and tooth configurations that they would be well served as models for alien marine life. The problem they pose for paleontologists is that cartilaginous skeletons don't fossilize well. Lots of tooth and tooth-bearing structures can be found, but there is little else left to place those structures into proper context.

Resurrecting the Shark is a detective story of sorts, an unconventional investigation that combined efforts from several different disciplines, including the purely artistic. It's a fantastic example of how different perspectives and experiences can be brought together to overcome intractable problems, even outperforming generations of scientific orthodoxy in the process. If you're into ancient skeletons but a bit jaded on the whole dinosaur thing, this is your read.

One minor disappointment: the touted app (which brings augmented reality to some of the illustrations) is nowhere to be found. This book was originally published in 2016, and for an app to disappear so completely in the three intervening years is itself a bit of a mystery.

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As part of Science Channel or Animal Planet's Monster Week last year, River Monsters ran a special on prehistoric river monsters and covered "The Buzz Saw Killer" as a runner up for the most dangerous river monster of all time. Much like the scientists and artists in this book, I was hooked from the first moment I was introduced to Helicoprion.

This ancient shark ancestor had an inset tooth whorl that took up almost all of the lower jaw and presumably devoured ammonites and squid throughout the world's oceans. As there was nothing before Helicoprion with anything remotely like a tooth whorl and certainly nothing that followed looking similar, it is understandable that the debate as to what these fossilized spiral remains really depicted raged on across centuries. Susan Ewing takes readers from the very first fossil discovered in the Australian Outback to the modern scientists putting together 3D models of Helicoprion's unique jaw arrangement. She uses a lot of scientific terms to denote genus and species and family names, but also to describe the biology of prehistoric sharks and other types of fish. However overwhelming names like Eugeneodontid or Chondrichthian may sound, Ewing is good at explaining the terms and you can gloss over the long names and think "shark" or "tooth whorl weirdness."

I particularly liked how Helicoprion came alive as more and more people got involved in a modern project to really figure out what this creature looked like. The best part is that there is still lots of room to continue to refine the features and possibly discover new things about this planet's history that no one has ever seen before.

[alexander shay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good explanations of all the scientific jargon that would otherwise have made the book unintelligible for someone not in the science field. That said, I still didn't follow every term, especially the Latin ones since some of them were quite similar. Ewing is also prone to really drawn out analogies that, for me, didn't really elucidate anything.
That aside, it was a really interesting book. I love everything to do with sharks, but I only knew the mare minimum about Helicoprion. I didn't realize it was its own genus, that it lived millions of years ago, or that it doesn't really have direct descendants living today. I always wondered how it came to be when no other shark really had a structure similar to it, either before or after (Edestus I don't really count. A banana peel and a whorl are not even remotely similar).
I was under the impression that, given a book was being written on it, more answers would have been found by now and a more 'definite' ending was going to be provided. But that's pretty well the nature of research. It was really interesting to see just how long in coming all the answers we have now have been, and how so many scientists had so many interpretations of Helicoprion based simply on knowledge and technology of the time.

(As a side note, I also got curious about Ray Troll's Sharkabet after it got mentioned and happened to find it at my university library.)

[Viviane Elbee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for non-fiction books about modern sharks and their eating habits when I stumbled across this book. This book is about a prehistoric shark-like creature, the Helicoprion (so it isn't exactly the type of book I was seeking.)

Nevertheless, this book is interesting and the Helicoprion's story is so fascinating that I ended up reading it in its entirety.

I would recommend it for people who like to read about prehistoric animals and who are interested in how scientists discover, study, decipher and try to understand prehistoric creatures. It would also appeal to shark lovers and people who love strange creatures. This book may appeal to students in high school & college and adults; it may be trickier for middle schoolers to follow.

I would categorize this book as mostly non-fiction, but since there are a lot of hypotheses, theories, and plausible "suggestions" it cannot be taken as absolute truth. (Also, some non-fiction people like it when authors stick to straight facts, but this book sometimes wraps a bit of "story" around the fossil findings. That did not bother me, especially since the author explains that this is how she envisions events based on the few facts she found, but it may bother some.)

Overall, a great book about a fascinating creature and the many scientists and artists who sought to understand it.

I was totally drawn in by Susan Ewing's voice and writing style.

[Jessica Matts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay…I’ll admit…I grabbed this book because I was drawn to the image of an ancient shark with what looked like a saw-blade in it’s mouth.

I’ve always been fascinated by fossils…ancient animals…what they could have looked like & how they possibly lived. If it wasn’t for the fact that it’s like hunting for a needle in a haystack…I possibly would have gone into paleontology.

This book…

Talks about the journey of deciphering & putting together the skull…body (which has never been found) & life style of an ancient shark….bouncing between the present & what possibly had gone though the minds of those back in the late 1800s & early 1900s that found the first few partial fossils of the blade…plus the very partial fossil of part the jaw with the blade.

This shark was unique….

It had what looked like a saw blade for teeth…and it turns out—as the tooth (or teeth) needed to be replaced, this shark didn’t shed them…it ‘wound’ them further into their jaw.

I found the story fascinating…and got slightly irritated with myself…as I’d missed seeing the new articles between 2012-2015 (when the fossil was getting attention again)…because I was trying to figure out my life…

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the history of shark evolution, evolution (in general), sharks (in general) or just needing an nonfiction book that is unique, informative, & has cool pictures towards the end.

Five out of five stars.

[Danielle T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ewing follows the intriguing tale of the whorled shark Helicoprion: historical speculation around the first fossils found in Russia and Australia, and then the modern-day revival of scientific interest, sparked by ISU student Jesse Pruitt and Alaskan artist Ray Troll's 20-year obsession. I'm from eastern Idaho, so I remember the exhibit in 2013! Very neat to take a peek behind the scenes of what went into it.

The parts I'm a tad meh on are when Ewing imagined what various people were doing at the time (the farmer who found an Australian fossil, the Russian school inspector who passed a curiosity on to a scientist, etc.) though I recognize that others may disagree on this aspect of popular science books.

Frustratingly, there is a "Resurrecting the Shark" app for augmented reality in the plates available on both the App Store and Google Play shop, but I couldn't find it for my Moto G5 Plus (nor does googling around seem to yield at least a store page...) The Idaho Virtualization Lab does good work, and when I was at the Idaho Museum of Natural History last week, they had augumented reality models of prehistoric horse fossils given flesh that were neat. Hopefully, future editions 1) broaden the availability of devices for this feature and 2) could possibly provide a specific URL to obtain said app.

[Rebecca Kiefer · Rating 2 out of 5]

A more accurate title for this book would’ve been something like: Ray Troll - and My Obsession and One-Sided Infatuation With Him. I was honestly angry for a good portion of the book with the author of salivating over Ray Troll and expounding on how he had done the Real Work that led to the scientific breakthroughs and for how little credit she gave the actual scientists.

It’s too bad because the premise of artistically rendering a creature with incomplete data could have been really interesting - the discussion of leaving the gills uncovered so it would “read” as a shark to the casual observer when the evidence could go either way was a fun glimpse, and about the only one. The rest was Ray Troll asking scientists for advice and getting pissy when they either wouldn’t speculate or when their speculation disagreed with his own preferences.

The author also noted there is almost no literature on the topic aimed at a lay audience. In some parts with bigger concepts (taxonomy, finding fossils) she did a good job providing detailed information but then summarizing the key points to carry forward. In many others she dove so into the weeds that I got a sense she was really paraphrasing from her sources without an actual strong understanding.

I think the idea could’ve worked really well as a 45-60 minute documentary, but as a book it fell flat.

[Susan Paxton · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, informative, and entertaining book, Resurrecting the Shark takes a look at the tale of discovery and research behind one very charismatic fossil shark - Helicoprion. This very odd creature, which lived in the latter part of the Permian, had a very unusual dental set-up, to put it mildly.

Author Susan Ewing does a masterful job taking us from the very first discovery - in Western Australia in the 1880s - through further finds and the theories of the people who have over the decades tried to interpret the fossils. Like other sharks, Helicoprion was mostly cartilage, so the finds were, with few exceptions, the bizarre teeth only. There are a number of interesting people involved, from the early scientists to the recent ad hoc team that seem to have solved at least some of the mysteries, and we get to know all of them; as usual the variety of people in science has its own fascination. The book is well illustrated and the endnotes will be helpful guiding the interested to the primary sources.

[David Basora · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are many reasons I loved this book. It's about sharks; it was scientifically and historically researched; it includes a concise summary of the history of paleontology and the study of paleozoic sharks (!); it tells a story in an engaging manner; there is a happy ending. Everything about the way this was written kept me wanting to learn more. I added more books to my to-be-read list as I read this book, and once I own I will add more because I definitely missed some. Beyond the unique aspect of the study of Heliocoprion, given what the fish was, this book was fun an dinteresting because Susan Ewing managed to convey the depth of animal diversity throughout Earth's history by putting into perspective just how little our experts can actually know. It makes the mysteries worth investigating, even if it takes decades of waiting for the technology to develop to analyze things further, or for a fossil to be found to learn something new.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a great job of detailing the current knowledge of fossil chondricthians. It also works hard to go into detail on how we required this information and much of the book is spent on the researchers who dedicated themselves to Helicoprion. Unfortnately, this is also where the book loses itself.
It felt like Ewing got too close to the current Helicoprion researchers to write about them objectively. As a result she goes beyond simply describing the rigors of modern paleontology and gets bogged down in the minutiae of their lives (it gets to the point where she's paraphrasing individual conversations). While I appreciate the urge to show the process of scientific discovery, it can be done without this level of detail. Most of that is towards the end of the book making the majority of it pretty good; the last quarter was a bit of a slog though.

[Laine Sanderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am greaty interested in ancient oceans, especially ancient sharks, so I probably would’ve given this book 5 stars regardless of the quality of its writing. I just have to say this is one of it not the best nonfiction books I have had the pleasure of reading. The way Susan fully delves into side explanations to explain the bigger aligns so perfectly with the way my brain works. An example being breifly mentioning taxomy and then going into the full history of how the discipline came to be. Susan Ewing could write a book on the history of golfing and I , a golf hater, would read it because I trust her to find a way to make it interesting. The epilogue made me actually tear up, something I do almost never whilst cosuming media. Could not recommend this book enough if you are interested in paleoichthology.

[Allan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my opinion sharks are one of earths most fascinating creatures. As an avid scuba diver, I have always been amazed by their presence. I was looking forward to learning more about the creation of these creatures, and the Helicoprion shark in particular. Therefore it was quite a surprise to find this book a bit of a challenge to get through. Perhaps the author should have had more personal experience with these creatures themselves before taking on this topic. All the personalities and science is presented; but I felt the book was a bit of a slog. Only someone with the utmost interest in fossils and fossil collection will find interest in this book. After reading this book; in no way am I interested in learning more about the subject. A bit of a disappointment.

[BBoulier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Ewing’s “Resurrecting the Shark” (2017) describes recent research on the characteristics of the Helicoprion, a paleozoic shark-like fish about the size of a great white. It was the apex ocean predator of its day and the species survived for about 10 million years. The most unusual feature of the fish was that it had a whorled spiral pattern of teeth rather like a buzz saw. You have to look it up on the internet to see how bizarre the tooth structure is. The teeth whorls have been found in Australia, the Urals, Idaho, and elsewhere. The book will be of interest to those who are interested in paleontology, although the last fourth of the book is quite technical and difficult to follow. It would have benefitted greatly from more pictures and diagrams.

[Donna Herrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing story of amazing science told amazingly well! I have always been interested in geology and in fossils, but all of the strange names like Devonian and Jurassic and Permian were unmemorable to me. This book explains how the geologic eras and layers got their names and how they relate to the story that she is telling. How mining activity underlies our pursuit of geologic knowledge, and how the science of geology has grown.
Ewing tells this story in language that everyone can understand with stories that are engaging and humorous. This book is so fun to read and so educational that it is my nominee for book of the year.

[Dr Susan Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susan Ewing did a wonderful job of writing about one of the weirdest fossils that some of us have had the luck and privilege to study - a story of one of those few—the one-in-a-billion "buzz-saw shark", Helicoprion, a genus that survived over a span of some ten million years, between about 270 and 280 million years ago and was first found in the west of the country I came to live in. These astonishing sharks have spiral rows of teeth and Susan brings to life the way men and women tackled the understanding of how these animals worked in the Early Permian seas. Well worth reading if you want to know how science moves along

[Ike Rakiecki · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book about a beastly shark-like fish called Helicoprion, which was about 30 feet long and is now extinct. The animal's most beastly aspect was a "whorl" of teeth that served as an appendage on the lower jaw. It basically had a moveable buzz saw in it's mouth. That being said, it was a very good book about the fossils of that fish. An aspect that I really enjoyed was the backstory that the writer provided about the paleontologists and artists who were involved in the research. It was more personal than some of the other science books that I've read recently.

[Laura Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Some say the the meek will inherit the earth, but really, it's the curious. It's yours for the asking."
This is the last line of this book and it is exactly the reason I kept reading. I am so curious about sharks and I have been my entire life, naming up to 30 different shark species at 6 years old.
Shark paleontology caught my interest what I first heard about megaladon but I hadn't explored beyond that until I read this.
Read this book and stick with it if you have any interest in paleontology, sharks, or geology! It satisfies! 👍🏼

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science books can be a chore to read but the clever and witty style made this a breeze. The topic would make a fascinating program for Discovery Channel's Shark Week and a welcome relief from the barrage of white shark videos they trot out every year. My only criticism of the book is that it could have used some illustrations near the end when the team is figuring out how to reconstruct the creature from the various fossil, jaw, and cartilage impressions. The energy is there, but prose is an awkward tool for something so complex and unusual.