Ancient, Bizarre New Species of Ghostshark Discovered

The Eastern Pacific Black Ghostshark is a bizarre, highly unusual, newly discovered species… yet it was found off the coast of California. This ‘chimaera’ is part of an ancient and strange group of fish that branched off from sharks, in terms of evolution, nearly 400 million years ago. They’re normally found in deep waters.

From Science Daily:

The new species, the Eastern Pacific black ghostshark (Hydrolagus melanophasma), was described in the September issue of the international journal Zootaxa by a research team including Academy Research Associates David Ebert and Douglas J. Long. Additional co-authors included Kelsey James, a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and Dominique Didier from Millersville University in Pennsylvania. This is the first new species of cartilaginous fish to be described from California waters since 1947.

This new species belongs to the genus Hydrolagus, Latin for ‘water rabbit’ because of its grinding tooth plates reminiscent of a rabbit’s incisor teeth. This new species was originally collected as early as the mid 1960s, but went unnamed until this year because its taxonomic relationships were unclear. A large blackish-purple form, Hydrolagus melanophasma (melanophasma is Latin for ‘black ghost’), is found in deep water from the coast of Southern California, along the western coast of Baja California, and into the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California). This species is known from a total of nine preserved museum specimens, and from video footage taken of it alive by a deep-water submersible in the Sea of Cortez.

Deep sea creatures are so fascinating, aren’t they? Finding new species is always fun, but it’s even more interesting when they are so ancient and have remained mostly unchanged for millenia. The sea is packed with so many amazing, mysterious things.

Link [Science Daily]

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