Animal Tales | Shark Mandibles

Sharks are cartilaginous fish, meaning that their skeletons are composed not of bone, but rather are entirely made of cartilage. Softer and more elastic than bone, cartilage remains tend to distort over time. Thus, complete shark skeletons are a rarity, as they are exceedingly difficult to preserve and display. Moreover, many sharks, like the Tiger and Grey Nurse sharks represented here, are too large to be permanently submerged in formaldehyde or spirits. What commonly survives is the only part of the shark which can be practically displayed, the mandible. These are also prone to distortion, and need to be periodically bent back into shape.

Of course, these mouths also enter the archive, and endure in the public imagination, because of the symbolic roles they have taken on. They have been cast as the perfect objects of terror and fascination. A large shark, rendered and displayed in this manner, is perhaps the best example of a specimen which is also a trophy. A part which is taken to represent a whole.

For all these reasons, a large proportion of a museum’s shark related collection, is likely to be mandibles. The parts you have are the parts you use, and identifying shark species by their teeth and jaws alone has become a field of research in itself. So too, the original size and length of the entire shark may be extrapolated by jaw and teeth measurements. These are necessary responses to the omissions in the record.

For all our fears and obsessions, sharks were widely persecuted throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The British pioneer of underwater photography, J.E. Williamson, played directly to these fears in his films and books.

As the dramatic centrepiece of his 1914 film, “Thirty Leagues Under the Sea”, he attempted to stage a duel between a man and a tiger shark. It is almost avant-garde. Beneath the water’s surface, a horse’s carcass hangs upside down, suspended with chains. Plumes of blood periodically rise as if clouds from a hydrothermal vent. As tiger sharks begin to arrive, Williamson and his crew use knives and harpoons to ambush them, from the water and the pontoon.

Williamson would later write that these “demons” and “wolves of the sea” possessed an “enthusiasm bordering on madness.” Clearly, from the very earliest days of aquatic cinema, sharks were utilised as plot devices, and depicted as being unnaturally bloodthirsty and frenzied. This imaginary had consequences. Grey Nurse sharks, today perceived as docile and harmless, were hunted almost to extinction around Australia under the false impression they were “man eaters”, a persecution largely motivated by their frightening appearance, their prominent teeth.