By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science
Contributor | March 1, 2018 01:10pm ET
Scientists have discovered a new species of
shark cruising the Atlantic Ocean.
The Atlantic sixgill shark is a deep-sea
dweller that
gives birth to sweet-faced pups. It was long thought to be part of a global
species of sixgill shark known as Hexanchus nakamurai, but new genetic
evidence reveals that it's a separate species. Researchers have dubbed the
newly discovered shark Hexanchus vitulus.
"We showed that the sixgills in the
Atlantic are actually very different from the ones in the Indian and Pacific
Oceans on a molecular level, to the point where it is obvious that they're a
different species even though they look very similar to the naked eye,"
Toby Daly-Engel, a shark scientist at the Florida Institute of
Technology, said in a
statement.[On the
Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks]
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