This week I have a guest mystery object for you, courtesy of regular mystery-solver Joe Vans:
Joe sent it to me as a bit of a challenge, and it was great fun to have a chance to figure it out – it reminded me of why I started this blog in the first place!
Joe was kinder to me than I usually am to you, as he provided a locality to help with identification, so it would be churlish of me to not do the same for you. Joe said:
mid-peninsula Baja California, gulf side.
I hope you have as much fun working this out as I did, and this week you won’t be competing with Joe to get the identification, and who knows, he may even feel like dropping some clues if nobody is getting close (although with the skills of some of you, I suspect that won’t be an issue). Enjoy!
Zygoma 
Hello….Is it a parrot fish ??? coral eater ?
It’s not a parrot fish and it doesn’t eat coral, although with these teeth I can certainly see why that would come to mind! These guys prefer shellfish.
Was once in a band with Hooty. Not the spiny ones, the split jaws means this one was relatively smooth
Arrgh, I just learned that ‘blowfish’ specifically refers to members of the spiny family and not the family to which this specimen belongs. Damn common names.
Common names are just so vulgar 😉
I can’t get too puffed up about knowing this fish since I am not sure about the species.
I found a list of fish from the Gulf of California. It includes 7 species in the four-tooth family. We can immediately rule out the sharpnose because it has an adult body length of about 9 cm (too small for these jaws). As for the other 6, I am not certain but I am going guess it is the oceanic species (a tautonym) based on size and the jaws slight pointyness.
I will say it was a camoflauged body… though almost all of them are.
Is that a reference to the dramatically different colour morphs of a certain species likened to an African galliform?
@Adam…. I wasn’t trying to make a specific reference… but now you have me double guessing myself! LOL