New discoveries are taking place at Mammoth Cave National Park and South Central Kentucky.

We spoke with the park's public information officer about never before seen fossils recently uncovered from the cave.

We have discovered two new species of ancient sharks from fossils that were found inside Mammoth Cave.

The two sharks were discovered as a part of the paleontological resources inventory that we've been conducting in the park since 2019.

They're just the latest discovery in a whole long list of shark fossils that we have found.

We've known there are shark fossils here for some time, but it took a specific expert in ancient sharks to look at those fossils and really let us know, hey, you have something very special here.

He was able to see these and realize they were something he had never run across before.

Part of this inventory that we've been doing has really revealed the significance of the shark fossils.

Yeah.

Inside Mammoth Cave, whenever Mammoth Cave formed, you know, 350 million years ago, that's when the stone formed the rock that makes up Mammoth Cave.

It was a very shallow, warm sea with a lot of sea life in it.

And as that sea life died, it came to the bottom of the ocean, built up over time to create the limestone.

But the bones and even some cartilage from some of the sharks was contained within that rock.

Being that mammoth cave is a cave.

It is very protective environment.

We don't have wind, We don't have water coming in.

We don't have the sun that would normally break down rock and damage those fossils over time.

So it's kind of a protected place to find these fossils.

You know, when we started this in 2019, we thought this would be a great, simple report that we could get to discover a little bit more about Mammoth Cave in the fossils here.

But it has just gone on and on and on because of the abundance of shark fossils they found here.

It's just another piece of the mammoth cave puzzle.

We always are discovering new things in the cave.

It's a new world down there all the time.

It's a great place of discovery and we're just excited to be a part of it.

A great place of discovery, indeed.

Mammoth Cave was invited to be part of the inventory research by the National Park Service.

So far, more than 70 different species of sharks have been identified.