Frilled Shark — printable fact sheet
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Frilled Shark
Chlamydoselachus anguineus
Chlamydoselachus anguineus looks less like a shark than like something reassembled from spare parts. Its body is long and eel-like, its dorsal fin is set almost at the tail, and it has six pairs of gill slits with extravagantly frilled margins — the first pair joined right acros…
Did you know?
- The frilled shark has a gestation period that may last up to 3.5 years, one of the longest known in the animal kingdom.
- The frilled shark is often called a living fossil, which is loose — the modern species is not ancient, but the lineage is, and the animal retains a set of features most sharks abandoned long ago. Its poorly calcified skeleton and oily liver keep it neutrally buoyant, so it can hang motionless in the water column without swimming. Nearly all specimens known to science have come up dead in deep trawls, and the few filmed alive were sick animals that had drifted into shallow water. Its enormous liver, packed with low-density oils, can make up a substantial fraction of its body weight.
What I learned
Draw the frilled shark
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