One comment: You note that the “first proper siting” of a great white occurred in 1901. I have always thought (and many sources back this up, including the recent Alan Cutler biography), that the famous shark that Nicolas Steno dissected and described in 1666/1667 was a great white.

As Cutler describes it, the shark was caught live, and had to be lashed to a tree in order to keep it on shore while it was dispatched. It was such a marvel, that word spread from Tuscany to Florence, where the Grand Duke Ferdinando II immediately ordered it brought for examination. Apparently, the beast weighed in at over a ton, too heavy to transport, and so only it’s head was sent.

I am sure you know this story, but Steno’s comparison of the shark’s teeth with those of local “tongue stones” (fossilized Megalodon teeth), led to his supposition that these latter objects were organic in origin, which led in turn to his master work, De solido, which not only pretty much settled the debate on the origin of fossils, but laid out all the basic principles of the science of stratigraphy.

Perhaps this is historical exaggeration on behalf of historians of geology (I admit that it *is* far cooler to think of this seminal event in geology/paleontology being inspired by the king of sharks!), but that it how the story is normally told.

Your link to the Gubili doesn’t seem to work. Perhaps this is discussed within his text?