By Laura Geggel, Senior
Writer | November 13, 2017 02:28pm ET
Forget about the minuscule odds
of spotting Ahab's white whale: Sightings of the frilled shark, a so-called
"living fossil" that has elusively swum around Earth's deep waters
since the age of the dinosaurs, may been an even rarer find.
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| Add (Awashima Marine Park)caption |
Deep-sea fishermen recently
spotted the snake-like shark (Chlamydoselachus
anguineus) in a pile of fish that unintentionally caught, known as bycatch,
while they were fishing off the coast of Portugal. The shark died, but the
fishermen handed it over to a research vessel, where scientists could study
it, according
to Boy Genius Report (BGR), a news site.
The examination gave scientists a
close-up look at the shark's roughly 300 three-pointed teeth, which it uses to
grab and kill prey, including fish, squid and other sharks.
Margarida Castro, a fishery
science researcher at the University of the Algarve, in Portugal, told Sic
Noticias, a Portuguese news outlet, said that these strange teeth, arranged in
a frill-like pattern, inspired the shark's name. The teeth look like backward
needles, and its jaw can snatch prey more than half its size.
#Portugal—rare #FrilledShark (Chlamydoselachus
anguineus) netted at depth of 700m (2.3k ft)—1.5m (5 ft) snake-like #sharkw/300 teeth—“living
fossil” from 80 million years ago http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-41928537 …
The roughly 5-foot-long (1.5
meters) shark has barely changed in the past 80 million years, earning it a
"living fossil" title. The fishermen reported catching the C.
anguineus at 2,300 feet (700 m) under water — about half as deep as it can
swim, as the species is known to range from about 65 feet to 4,900 feet (20 to
1,500 m) underwater, according to the International Union for
Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
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