Dr. Catherine Macdonald

speaker

130 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Dr. Catherine Macdonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Science Friday · Tracking shark populations, one shark at a time · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

So sharks continuously replace their teeth throughout their lives for some species as often as every 10 days.

Every individual shark is producing thousands of teeth in its lifetime.

And as one is dulled down and no longer as functional, it falls out the front and the next comes forward to take its place.

That's going to keep everything nice and sharp and in working order.

And so they're constantly developing replacement teeth in a little conveyor belt process and

Its teeth are also the thing that fossilizes the best because it's cartilaginous.

And so a lot of the fossil record on sharks is composed primarily of their teeth.

Oh, that's such a satisfying answer.

Are there things that people can do to help sharks that we're not aware of?

When people ask how they can help sharks...

There's a lot of answers that feel really obvious and not very useful, like don't eat shark, but most people don't.

So the number one thing that you can do is help contribute to conservation of marine habitats more broadly.

And so everything you do all the way upstream to clean up trash, to maintain water quality, to keep pesticides or fertilizers out of

those streams and rivers, ultimately benefits all of the marine animals that we care about.

If you care about sharks, if you care about seahorses or manatees, because there's no shortage of amazing marine animals, think about the things that you can do to help with water quality wherever you do live.

For me personally, it's tricky because it is pretty much the one time of year that everyone is sharing my special interest, which brings me a lot of joy.

But I...

I would say I prefer the more science oriented shark content.

Um, and that every now and then we end up, uh, down a road that I really wish we wouldn't go down.

Uh, so I, for most of a decade, I couldn't give a public talk without having someone ask me whether Megalodon is real.

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