They may not be as beautiful as the shimmering , nacreous blue shark or as mighty as the magnificent great blank , but goblin sharks are truly amazing creatures , and the Australian Museum is understandably very excited to have the opportunity to showcase such a rarefied specimen .
Australian Museum / AFP
This latest add-on to the ichthyology collection was accidentally caught back in January by fishermen working in Green Cape , off the New South Wales slide , at a astuteness of around 200 meters ( 656 feet),AFP reports . It was then fork over to the Merimbula Aquarium where it remained in excellent condition until being donated to the museum in Sydney , according toABC News .
“ It ’s pretty impressive , it ’s not hideous it ’s beautiful , ” said the museum ’s fish collection managing director Mark McGrouther . “ They are not caught abysmally often . They are not encountered abominably often at all . ” In fact , only four goblin shark have ever been obtained by the museum since the first two arrived back in the ‘ fourscore , concord toAFP , and McGrouthe has only take in three throughout his intact fishy career .
The hob shark , Mitsukurina owstoni , was first described over one hundred years ago , but so few specimens have been catch that we still know relatively piddling about these animals , which are easily one of the rarest shark species . Often referred to as “ living fossils,”M. owstoniis in reality the only surviving instance of the Mitsukurinidae family , which date back some 125 million years .
Goblin sharks are bottom - dweller that are rarely seen at the surface or in shallow coastal water , which is probably why so few have been get . They be given to live at depth of between 300 ( 980 ft ) and 900 cadence ( 2,950 ft ) , although they have been found as rich as 1,300 time ( 4,260 ft ) and as shallow as 95 metre ( 311 foot ) .
Perhaps the most interesting features of these brute are their elongated snouts and ragged jaw . Along their snout are a serial publication of pores that moderate a sense system of rules known asampullae of Lorenzini , which detects weak electric impulses in the water , for model from the heartbeats of prey . When they go about their dupe , their jaws rapidly sling forward and they use their sharp , nail - comparable teeth to spear up prey , rather than rationalize them like many other shark species .
[ ViaAFPandABC News ]
