Dinosaur-Age Shark with 300 'Frilled' Teeth Caught in Deep Sea

Forget about the minuscule odds of spotting Ahab's white whale: Sightings of the frilled shark, a so-called "living fossil" that has elusively swum around Earth's deep waters since the age of the dinosaurs, may been an even rarer find. Deep-sea fishermen recently spotted the snake-like shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) in a pile of fish that unintentionally caught, known as bycatch, while they were fishing off the coast of Portugal. The shark died, but the fishermen handed it over to a research vessel, where scientists could study it, according to Boy Genius Report (BGR), a news site. The examination gave scientists a close-up look at the shark's roughly 300 three-pointed teeth, which it uses to grab and kill prey, including fish, squid and other sharks. The roughly 5-foot-long (1.5 meters) shark has barely changed in the past 80 million years, earning it a "living fossil" title. These sharks have an incredibly long gestation period lasting between one and two years — a period almost on a par with that of an elephant, according to the IUCN. Moreover, like an elephant calf, these shark pups aren't small...more