Rare PREHISTORIC SHARK Photographed Alive! The FRILLED Shark (+ Video)

The frilled shark, Chlamydoselachus anguineus, is a living fossil shark species, the only member of the family Chlamydoselachidae in the order Hexanchiformes. The Southern African frilled shark is a proposed new species from the Southern African range.

These two species are very different from the other hexanchiform sharks, and it has recently been proposed that the two frilled sharks should be given their own order: Chlamydoselachiformes.

Additional extinct types are known from fossil teeth. The frilled shark was thought to be extinct itself; it was only discovered alive in Japanese waters in the 19th century. On January 21, 2007, a specimen was found alive off the coast of Japan and was brought to Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, where it died after a few hours. It was a 1.6 m (5.2 ft) long female found alive at the surface, perhaps there because of illness or weakness from the warm water.

The shark was captured but was not adapted to live in the warm, shallow water that it was moved to and died soon after capture.

Small numbers of frill sharks are caught incidentally by various deepwater commercial fisheries around the world, using trawls, gillnets, and longlines. In particular, it is regularly taken in Suruga Bay in bottom gillnets meant for sea breams and gnomefishes, and in midwater trawls meant for the shrimp Sergia lucens. Japanese fishers regard it as a nuisance, as it damages the nets. This shark is sometimes sold for meat or processed into fishmeal, but is not economically significant. Because of its very low reproductive rate and the continuing expansion of commercial fisheries into its habitat, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed it as Near Threatened.

Garman, and numerous authors since, have advanced the frilled shark as an explanation for sea serpent sightings. Because of the shark's modest size, some cryptozoologists have posited the existence of a giant relative, particularly as larger Chlamydoselachus species are known from the fossil record.

Highly specialized for life in the deep sea, the frilled shark has a reduced, poorly calcified skeleton and an enormous liver filled with low-density lipids, allowing it to maintain its position in the water column with little effort. It is one of the few sharks with an "open" lateral line, in which the mechanoreceptive hair cells are positioned in grooves that are directly exposed to the surrounding seawater. This configuration is thought to be basal in sharks and may enhance its sensitivity to the minute movements of its prey.

Many frilled sharks are found with the tips of their tails missing, probably from predatory attacks by other shark species.



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Read more about the Frill Shark: Wikipedia