No sleeper shark this time, but very rare footage (http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/01/24/shark.japan.reut/index.html)of another denizen of the deep, no true ceph connection, really, so Tony: please, move to members' area when applicable...

That is one really ugly fish.

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/01_wk4/FrilledSharkG_468x331.jpg

Super cool!

It really does look more eel-like. The frilled gills are really bizarre.

:shock: Wow!!

It's mouth looks like the inside of a woodchipper with those teeth.

I require tight control on non-ceph threads in the public forums but there are rare exceptions... this is one of those! Fascinating story.

Ta Tony! What particularly strikes me about the pose of our frilled friend here, is that it appears as humped as some *sandtigers I've seen in aquaria around the world. Is that a pathology specific to chondrichthyes??

*Carcharias taurus (Rafinesque, 1810) AKA Odontaspis sp.

What strikes me is (apart from the teeth :shock:) that it looks emaciated. If our sharks looked like that we'd be really worried!

But very very cool!

J

At first I wished to disagree, judging other (dead) examples of Chlamydoselachus anguineus I'd seen earlier, until I came accros this (http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/04etta/logs/aug27/media/frilled_shark.html), the actual first video to have been shot of this elusive creature... Here's a still attached. The other attached photoshopped image (© 2003 Marine Themes Pty Ltd. All rights reserved) is likely from a dead specimen.

This animals are really fantastic. They own some anatomical features which are really unique among modern sharks and quite primitive. Their teeth are also highly unusual, as they have three instead of one sting and looks like a fork. Surely formidable to catch squids.
http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/shark_profiles/profile-images/chlamy/frill_teeth.gif

They look very similar to catsharks (Scyliorhinidae) which are very cool. I wonder how closely related they are.

That´s just a result of convergent evolution, they are only very very distantly related to catsharks.