Some sharks have elegant lines and move with the liquid evenness of creatures perfectly at home with their place in the Universe. Others, by their spectacular and elusive natures, achieve fame and capture our collective imaginations in a way usually reserved for human celebrities. Biologically sharks are exquisite examples of evolutionary perfection, featuring adaptations of stunning sophistication and economical elegance. They inhabit an alien liquid universe in which they go about secret lives and enjoy a freedom we can only imagine. Sharks are also one of Nature's most durable success stories, having endured and flourished through at least 425 million years of profound environmental change.
Sharks are thus the perfect mythological beasts for our times.
There are no shark websites quite like this one. Sure, there are a lot of shark-themed websites. Altogether, there are over 1,100 species of elasmobranchs, representing an astonishing variety of forms and lifestyles. To me, the diversity of sharks and their kin is far more fascinating than the relatively rare and hugely overblown subject of shark attacks. Since no website on the Internet surveys all known groups of elasmobranch and explains how they are related to one another, it seemed there was a definite on-line 'gap' that I could fill.