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Yes, The Frilled Shark Is Really Freaky. But There Are Other 'living Fossils' That Are Just As Weird. - Popular Science

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We've been here before: someone pulled something freaky-looking out of the bottom of the ocean, and now Google News is flooded with headlines about "dinosaur-era" or "prehistoric" sharks and "living fossils."

Indeed, the frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) looks like something from another (much scarier) time. But no, scientists didn't just trawl up some time-traveling dinosaur fish.

"Living fossil conjures up the idea of long-lived species or organisms out of time longing for the good old days of the Devonian and disdainful of whippersnappers with their colour vision and adaptations to human pollution," Mark Carnall wrote in The Guardian in 2016. But, he went on to note, the phrase is misleading: these so-called fossils aren't actually identical to ones that lived in prehistoric times. The phrase usually refers to animals that have retained an unusual number of "primitive" features (quirks that were weeded out of all their cousins long ago), leaving them looking more like relatives that lived and died millions of years ago than their fellow extant species.

It might be the last remnant of an old lineage that has otherwise died out, but you better believe even the relatively isolated frilled shark has had to adapt and change at some point over the past few million years. Natural selection may happen sluggishly in the isolated confines of the deep sea, but it still happens. No species gets to sit this stuff out.

If this is your first time meeting the fair frilled shark, you probably think it looks rather monstrous—which only adds to the illusion that it comes from another world entirely. But in the deepest, darkest corners of the ocean, it has a lot of competition for the title of weirdest-looking shark. Here are a few other favorites:

The goblin shark

Yes, Chlamydoselachus anguineus has a terrifying maw. Those 300-or-so bristle-like teeth are used to trap fish and squid in a predatory lunge.

But the goblin shark gives the frilled shark a run for its money in the maw department. You know how the alien in Alien has a jaw-within-a-jaw that pops out to attack its prey? Well, the goblin shark does that, too. The shark's anatomy suggests it might be on the slow side, but the ability to quickly snap its jaw forward allows it to ambush passing prey without moving the rest of its body.

The goblin shark is also sometimes called a living fossil, as it's the last remaining member of the 125-million-year-old Mitsukurinidae family. You'll find it more than 4,000 feet below the ocean surface, assuming that you want to find it.

Deceptively mundane. NOAA Cookiecutter shark

A cookiecutter shark sounds like it should be adorable, or at least boring. But while there's nothing too shocking about its body, the creature's name actually refers to the cookie-cutter-like wounds it leaves behind in prey. Oh, and it gets worse: the name is terribly misleading in the worst way. The shark latches onto its prey's flesh and twists around, scooping out a deep chunk of meat with it saw-like set of chompers. That's our best guess based on the wounds, anyway; no one has seen a cookiecutter shark feed.

"These chunks are conical, so the cookie-cutter metaphor isn't quite right; 'Ice cream scoop shark' or 'watermelon baller shark' are more accurate, if less catchy," Ed Yong wrote for National Geographic in 2013.

Yum.

The resulting wounds are pretty gnarly, but you can see examples here.

The ghost shark

This strange little pup is my personal fave; it looks like a truly mediocre puppeteer's attempt at creating a shark for a Tim Burton film. The fish's lineage broke away from true sharks and rays some 300 million years ago, giving them the lost-deep-sea-dinosaur appeal of the frilled shark with none of the frills.

The ghost shark is practically a surface-dweller compared to the species above—it chills out around 650 feet down—and may sometimes even migrate into bays to mate in the spring. As such, we eat it. The Florida Museum reports that the species is often sold as whitefish in Australia and New Zealand, ending up in fish and chips. So the next time you find yourself eating a fish stick down under, know that the meat may have come from a "living fossil."

From frilly to gilly. NOAA Bluntnose sixgill shark

The bluntnose sixgill migrates vertically throughout the day (it goes up and down) but prefers to live some 6,000 feet deep. The species proves that fossil-esque features don't necessarily look nightmarish; it's known for sharing an unusually close resemblance with 200-million-year-old fossils, but it doesn't look that weird—save for its particularly gilly neck (hence the name). Then again, weirdness is in the eye of the beholder. You may disagree.

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Rachel Feltman is Editor-at-Large at Popular Science. She hosts and oversees the hit podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, and helps to fill the magazine's digital pages with thrilling features. She lives in Jersey City with her surprisingly tall husband and surprisingly old cat. 

11 Fascinating Facts About The Frilled Shark - Mental Floss

Sometimes called a "living fossil" because it has changed so little since prehistoric times, the eel-like frilled shark—which is rarely seen by humans—has been in the news this week after a snake-like one was found off the coast of Portugal. Here's a quick primer.

1. IT'S NAMED FOR ITS GILLS.

Its scientific name is Chlamydoselachus anguineus, but this creature's common name comes from its gills: Unlike all other sharks, which have separate gills, C. Anguineus' first pair of gills go all the way across its throat; each pair is lined at the edges with red "fringe."

2. IT WAS DISCOVERED IN THE 19TH CENTURY. Illustration of a frilled shark.Samuel Garman, Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

The sharks were first scientifically described by German ichthyologist Ludwig H.P. Döderlein, who taught at Tokyo University from 1879 to 1881 and brought two specimens captured in Tokyo Bay when he returned to Vienna. His paper describing the sharks was lost, however, so the first description comes from Samuel Garman in the 1884 edition of the Bulletin of Essex Institute. In the remarks after the description, Garman noted that

Such an animal as that described is very likely to unsettle disbelief in what is popularly called the "sea serpent." Though it could hardly on examination be taken for anything but a shark, its appearance in the forward portion of the body, particularly in the head, brings vividly to mind the triangular heads, deep-cleft mouths, and fierce looks of many of our most dreaded snakes. In view of the possible discoveries of the future, the fact of the existence of such creatures, so recently undiscovered, certainly calls for a suspension of judgment in regard to the non-existence of that oft-appearing but elusive creature, the serpent-like monster of the oceans.

The frilled shark's species name, anguineus, is Latin for "consisting of snakes" or "snaky."

Biologist David A. Ebert, director of the Pacific Shark Research Center, described a second frilled shark species—Chlamydoselachus africana, which lives off the coast of Africa and is about half as long as its predecessor—in 2009.

3. IT HAS INTENSE TEETH.

The frilled shark's mouth is just as terrifying as the maw of a great white: It's lined with 25 rows of backward-facing, trident-shaped teeth—300 in all. "The teeth are constructed for grasping and from their peculiar shape and sharpness it would seem as if nothing that once came within their reach could escape them," Garman wrote. "Even in the dead specimen the formidable three-pronged teeth make the mouth a troublesome one to explore." 

Ebert can testify to that fact. "I can tell you from snagging my fingers on the teeth, you can only back out one way and that's in toward the mouth and then out," he told WIRED. "It didn't feel good, I can tell you that." The shark uses the bright white teeth, which sharply contrast against its brown body, to lure in prey: "By the time [the prey] realize, Oh, that's the teeth of a shark, they're too close and the shark is able to ambush them at that point," Ebert said. "It's almost like when you drive out of a parking lot exit and they have the spikes sticking out that say, 'Do not back up.' That's kind of what happens when these things catch prey items."

And as if its teeth weren't freaky enough, the frilled shark has spines, called dermal denticles, lining its mouth. So if you happen to see one of these anywhere, it's better to look and not touch.

4. IT "HOVERS" IN THE WATER...

Scientists once believed that the frilled shark wriggled through the water like an eel. But according to the ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research, "its body cavity is elongate and packed with a huge liver perfused with low-density oils and hydrocarbons, making the shark almost neutrally buoyant at depth."

5. … AND IT MAY STRIKE AT ITS PREY LIKE A SNAKE.

No one has ever observed the frilled shark hunting, but scientists believe that it uses its posterior fins as propulsive surfaces to launch itself at its prey. Its long jaws, which terminate at the back of its head, may allow the animal to gape extra wide and take in prey half as long as its body. Analysis of the stomach contents of captured specimens has revealed that the frilled shark's diet is 61 percent cephalopod, 11 percent teleost fishes, and, occasionally, other sharks.

6. IT'S FOUND ALL OVER THE WORLD—BUT YOU PROBABLY WON'T SEE IT.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations notes that the frilled shark is "wide-ranging but spottily distributed"; you can see where the shark is found on the map above. It typically resides in depths between 390 and 4200 feet, so people rarely see these sharks unless they venture to the surface, which isn't unheard of (as you'll see below).

7. FEMALES ARE BIGGER THAN MALES. The head of a frilled shark.Opencage, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.5

On average, males range from 3.2 to 3.6 feet and females from 4.4 to 4.9 feet; the maximum these sharks can reach is 6.4 feet.

8. THEIR GESTATION PERIOD MAY BE 3.5 YEARS LONG.

A study of frilled sharks in Japan revealed that the animals breed year-round; litters typically consist of six pups, which emerge from eggs while still in the mother's uterus and are then born live. Scientists think the shark may have the longest gestation period ever: Frilled sharks could gestate for as long as 42 months, nearly twice as long as African elephants carry their young. Scientists theorize that the extreme length has something to do with the shark's cold deep sea habitat.

9. IT WASN'T SEEN IN ITS NATURAL HABITAT UNTIL 2004.

NOAA scientists exploring the "Latitude 31-30 Transect" in the Atlantic Ocean captured a video of a frilled shark "swimming over sea bottom that was covered with tiny sand dunes" during a submersible dive. "This species has been, on rare occasion, caught or taken in bottom trawls," the site notes. "To the knowledge of everyone on board, however, this was the first time anyone had ever seen the rare species in its natural habitat."

10. ONE WAS CAPTURED IN JAPAN IN 2007.

In January 2007, a Japanese fisherman spotted a strange, eel-like creature with a mouth full of sharp teeth near the surface; he alerted the staff of the Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, who captured the animal and transferred it to a seawater pool, where they filmed it. "We think it may have come close to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters," a park official said. "We believe moving pictures of a live specimen are extremely rare. They live between 600 and 1000 meters under the water, which is deeper than humans can go." The shark, a female, died a few hours after its capture.

11. IT CALLS ANOTHER FREAKY SHARK ITS COUSIN.

The frilled shark might have rows upon rows of gnarly teeth, but its cousin, the goblin shark, can thrust its jaw out of its face. Which is more terrifying?

Bizarre Prehistoric Frilled Shark With 300 Teeth Known As 'living Fossil' Found - The Mirror

18:06, 04 May 2022Updated 18:08, 04 May 2022

A prehistoric shark with 300 teeth offers an incredible insight into a species rarely ever seen.

The frilled shark has been swimming in the depths of the ocean since the time of the dinosaurs and is often called a "living fossil" because in the 80 million years they've been known to live on earth, the fish have barely changed.

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Back in 2017, fishermen were stunned to catch sight of the rare creature when it was pulled from the ocean near Portugal from more than 2,000 feet below the surface.

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With 300 teeth and a long and slim body, the shark - distant cousin of other sharks like the great whites - was described as being "reminiscent of a snake", according to National Geographic.

Speaking with SIC Noticisas TV, researchers back then said they were conducting a European Union project to minimize the unwanted catch that results during commercial fishing, when they came across one of the world's rarest catches.

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The fish found was measured at around 5ft in length and pictures shared online show hundreds of intimidating looking teeth and a long and thin body.

However, despite sharing pictures online of its intimidating teeth, knowledge of the rarely seen creature suggests they pose the biggest threat to other fish - having a hinged jaw to catch larger prey.

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National Geographic reports that in a statement released by the Portuguese Institute for the Sea and Atmosphere, they noted there is actually little known about the species.

It has been found in waters across the Atlantic and in waters off the coasts of Japan and Australia, but because the shark lives in extreme depths and is actually rarely caught, scientists are unsure of how many there are in population.

But fossils of the same species have been found that date back to millions of years ago.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists the frilled shark as a species of least concern, but it was noted that increasing deep water commercial fishing could in fact increase the likelihood of the frilled shark becoming an unwanted catch.

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