TRUE

Multiple high-credibility sources confirm that sharks are older than trees. The evolutionary lineage of sharks dates back approximately 450 million years to the Late Ordovician Period 2 3 5. In contrast, the earliest species classified as trees, such as the extinct Archaeopteris, did not appear until roughly 350 to 390 million years ago 6 7. While primitive land plants emerged around 470 million years ago, they predated trees, meaning sharks occupied the oceans for at least 60 to 100 million years before the first forests existed on land 4 7 8.