Great white sharks in Mediterranean originated from Indian Ocean

BBC : Leslie Noble of the University of Aberdeen and his collaborators have analyzed the DNA of great white sharks in the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea and reached a startling conclusion. The great whites in the Mediterranean are more closely related to their counterparts in the distant antipodes than to their counterparts in the nearby Atlantic. Moreover, because random genetic mutations occur at roughly the same rate, Noble and his team could deduce that the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean populations diverged 450 000 years ago. At that time, Earth was between ice ages. Strong currents could have taken some Indian Ocean sharks to the Mediterranean, which was more accessible than it is today. Because sharks spawn where they were born, the first generation of Mediterranean sharks would have stayed and not tried to find their way back. The results appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B .