But their story is even more fascinating than that.
Their lineage reaches back to some of the earliest jawed vertebrates, and over hundreds of millions of years they survived planetary upheavals, mass extinctions, and major evolutionary turning points.
I wrote a new article about the evolution of sharks - not just as a biology topic, but as a story about deep time, survival, and the strange persistence of life.
If you like evolution, fossils, prehistory, and the big story of life on Earth, this one is for you.
Read it here: