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What has 300 teeth, lives 1,300 feet below sea
level and has ancestors that date back 80 million years?
The frilled shark. And this “living fossil” was caught last month in
waters off Victoria, Australia.
“I’ve been at sea for 30 years and I’ve never seen a shark look like that,”
skipper David Guillot told Fairfax Radio on Wednesday. The Sydney Morning Herald
reported Guillot found the creature while fishing near Lakes Entrance in
southeastern Victoria. Guillot continued: “The head on it was like something out
of a horror movie. It was quite horrific looking. … It was quite scary
actually.”
At about 6 feet in length, it’s not among the largest sharks in the seas. It
looks more like an eel. But it’s got many more teeth than most sharks, 25 rows
of them for a total of 300. By contrast, the great white shark has 50 teeth.
The shark was offered to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organization, but was declined because they already had a specimen. Simon Boag,
from the South East Trawl Fishing Association told ABC: “We couldn’t find a
fisherman who had ever seen one before. … It looks prehistoric, it looks like
it’s from another time.” By Nick Kirkpatrick
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