| Abstrak/Abstract |
The “Plio-Pleistocene” is a term refers to the transition of Upper Pliocene and Lower Pleistocene in geological
timescale. The Islands of Indonesia, especially Java Island during the Plio-Pleistocene were a lagoon, seashores, and coastal swamps on several parts of central Java and southern part of the island. Geologists suggested the age of Indonesia PlioPleistocene ranged from 2 800 000 to 1 800 000 years ago. The geological deposits of Plio-Pleistocene occurred in Sangiran the Prehistoric site. The Sangiran area in Plio-Pleistocene time was an ancient marine environment. This exposed ancient marine environment yielded several fossils of marine life such as mollusk’s shells, partial skeletons of estuarine crocodiles and shark’s teeth. There are many sharks’ teeth with different morphological shapes found in this environment. Teeth are one of the body parts which mostly perfectly fossilized. Teeth have unique morphological characters to determine taxonomical groups. Therefore it could be used as an identification tool. Fossils of shark teeth found in the Plio-Pleistocene environment of Java are plenty and varied in shapes. This research aimed to understand sharks diversity during the Plio-Pleistocene based on the identification of fossil sharks teeth found in Java. The method used was morphological comparison and PCA analysis. Recent or modern sharks’ teeth were studied in order to understand morphological characteristics of each genus or species. Recent sharks’ teeth studied were a collection of the Research Centre for Oceanography - The Indonesian Institute of Sciences or LIPI (Ancol, Jakarta). Afterward, these recent sharks’ teeth characteristics were used to identify the fossil of sharks’ teeth collection of the Museum of Geology (Bandung), Sangiran Museum and Early Man Site(BPSMPS, Karanganyar, Central Java), and Laboratory of Bioanthropology and Paleoanthropology Faculty of Medicine UGM (Yogyakarta). PCA analysis was done in order to show the difference based on morphological characters of each genus/species. The results, there are 11 genera of sharks appear during the Plio-Pleistocene in the Java Sea. |
