A rare sea creature described as an “alien of the deep” has been discovered off the coast of Australia and delivered to a museum, where it was displayed on Tuesday with its fleshy snout, nail-like teeth, and flabby pink body.
The goblin sharks, which resemble prehistoric creatures, live on deep sea bottoms, and little is known about their lives.
“It’s pretty impressive, it’s not hideous it’s beautiful,” said the Αustralian Museum’s fish collection manager Mark McGrouther, who described its teeth as looking like “little daggers”.
“They are not caught terribly often. They are not encountered terribly often at all.”
What makes the rarely seen Goblin Shark so unusual is its bizarre ‘alien-like’ jaw mechanism. As its jaws close, two ligaments are stretched. The act of opening the mouth releases the tension on the ligaments resulting in the jaws being thrust forward.
cMcGrouther stated that this was the museum’s fourth goblin shark acquisition, with the first two collected in the 1980s.
One of the other weird-looking things about the Goblin Shark is its long flattened snout, the lower side of which is covered with pores. These are the openings to the ‘ampullae of Lorenzini’, a sensory system that allows the electroreception of prey. Food items are believed to include fishes, octopuses, squids, shrimps and crabs. Sadly the gut of ‘our fish’ was empty, so they can’t describe its last meal.
The most recent was caught by a fisherman in January. It was discovered near Eden, off Australia’s southeast coast, at a depth of about 200 meters (656 feet), and was delivered to a local aquarium, where it was kept in excellent condition for the museum.
McGrouther described himself as “thrilled” to have handled the shark, which can be found in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. The species, named “Mitsukurina owstoni,” is thought to be a living fossil dating back 125 million years..
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