Friday mystery object #423 answer

Last week I gave you this fishy looking critter to identify:

It wasn’t an overly difficult one for most of you, since it is a very distinctive and somewhat unusual animal with some immediately recognisable features. Most obvious are the gills.

Bony fish only have one visible external opening on either side of their head where water exits after it’s flowed over the gills, and this is well hidden when the gill flap (or operculum) is closed. So this is clearly not a bony fish.

Most modern sharks have 5 external visible gill slits, but this one has six. That makes it a bit of an evolutionary anachronism. There are only seven species of shark with more than 5 gills and they are all in the Order Hexanchiformes, which narrows down the possibilities considerably. Of those, two have seven gills, leaving just five possible species.

Those five species sit in just two families – the Cow Sharks and the Frilled Sharks. These can be separated based on a variety of features, but the most obvious is that the Cow Sharks have fusiform (or spindle-like) body shapes with a very pointed nose to help them move efficiently through the water by minimising drag. The Frilled Sharks have more anguilliform (eel-like) bodies with a blunter head and mouth set further forward in relation to the eyes – a feature about the mystery object picked up on by Allen Hazen.

There are only two species of Frilled Shark to choose between and I’m not sure I could tell the difference between them based on the photo provided. However, one species is only found off the coast of South Africa, and in last week’s post I dropped a (hopefully) helpful clue – this specimen was caught off the coast of Ireland.

That means this can only be the Frilled Shark Chlamydoselachus anguineus Garman, 1884. Well done to Adam Yates for being the first to get it spot on. This specimen was caught off the coast of County Donegal at a depth of 390 fathoms (or 713 metres in standard units) just over 21 years ago. A special mention to Pete Liptrot on Twitter who managed to identify this mystery object to the actual specimen – not just the species!

C. anguineus far more likely given distribution and number of records. There was one collected during a survey near Rockall, this isn't it is it?
— Pete Liptrot (@Hyosube) December 10, 2021

Friday mystery object #263 answer

Last Friday I gave you this mystery object that came up at a natural materials identification course that I delivered at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter last week:

There were a variety of suggestions as to what it might be, but everyone (correctly) discounted the information on the label that it was a tooth.

There were some suggestions of wood and ivory, but there were two suggestions which were definitely in the right ball-park. Daniel Calleri suggested it might be something fishy, while Krista got it pretty much spot on when she suggested a dorsal barb from a skate or ray.

I’m pretty sure that it’s the spine from the leading edge of the first or second dorsal fin of a Spurdog shark in the genus Squalus Linnaeus, 1758.

Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthias) by Dornhai

These turn up every so often in collections, sometimes as decoration, sometimes as items found in Native American middens. Presumably they’re composed of keratin, which is a commonly occurring structural protein in vertebrate skin that can also form hair, horn, scales and claw.

Thanks for all your comments and well done to Krista!