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Which came first, sharks or the United States?

Which came first, sharks or the United States?
sharks
450 million years ago — 450.002 million years before the United States

sharks came first, by 450.002 million years. Shark-like fish were swimming the oceans in the Ordovician.

Side by side

sharks the United States
Year 450 million years ago 1776
Date — 1776-07-04
Category nature country
What happened Shark-like fish were swimming the oceans in the Ordovician. The Declaration of Independence was adopted.

sharks

Scales from shark-like fish appear around 450 million years ago and unambiguous shark teeth by about 420 million years ago. The first trees appeared roughly 385 million years ago, so sharks predate trees by tens of millions of years. They also predate Saturn's rings on most current estimates, and they have survived all five mass extinctions.

the United States

The date used here is the Declaration, 4 July 1776, which is the one people mean. Two others have equal claim: Britain recognised independence in 1783, and the Constitution took effect in 1789, so the current government is younger than the country by thirteen years. The United States is older as a state than Germany (1871), Italy (1861), Canada (1867) and modern Japan (1868).

Deep-time dates are approximate to within tens of millions of years and shift as new fossils are found.

Common questions

Which came first, sharks or the United States?
sharks, by 450.002 million years — 450 million years ago against 1776.
When did sharks start?
450 million years ago. Shark-like fish were swimming the oceans in the Ordovician.
When did the United States start?
1776. The Declaration of Independence was adopted.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution
  2. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked