Tag: chimaeras

Shark jaws

October 23, 2010 • 5:50 am

Here are two more photos from my immensely edifying visit to Jim Krupa’s lab at The University of Kentucky.  They show the extreme diversity of morphology that evolution can produce in a single group.

The first shows the jaw of what I remember as a tiger shark, Galeocerdo cuvier.  National Geographic notes that “They have sharp, highly serrated teeth and powerful jaws that allow them to crack the shells of sea turtles and clams. The stomach contents of captured tiger sharks have included stingrays, sea snakes, seals, birds, squids, and even license plates and old tires.”

The rows of teeth are lined up, waiting in the wings, to be replaced after one on duty is lost. The teeth aren’t embedded in the jaw, but merely in the gum tissue.  Wikipedia has a good article on them.

Sharks are in the class Chondrichthyes:  they have cartilage rather than bone.  The subclass Elasmobranchii includes sharks, skates and rays.  And the tiger shark is in the largest order of elasmobranchs, the Carcharhiniformes.

And here’s one of the weirdest elasmobranchs—the jaw of the Port Jackson shark (Heterodontus portusjacksoni), endemic to Australian waters.  It’s in the order Heterodontiformes (“bull sharks”), distinguished, among other things, by having the mouth completely in front of the eyes. The “Heterodontus” part of the genus name means “different teeth,” and that’s indeed what you see, spectacularly, in the jaw.  Having differentiated teeth in the jaw is very rare in sharks:

The small teeth in front are for grabbing and piercing, the ones at the rear for grinding up stuff, especially molluscs.  The Florida Museum of Natural History site notes:

This species feeds primarily on echinoderms, crustaceans, molluscs, and some small fish. Sea urchins and large gastropod molluscs are noted in almost every study on the diets of Port Jackson sharks. Stomach contents are typically ground up too small for full identification, thus leading researchers to believe Port Jackson sharks grind their food thoroughly before swallowing. This is also supported with juvenile diets, since it has been noted that juveniles eat more soft-bodied animals, and contain less molar-like teeth.

Here’s what the jaws look like in situ:

For $750 you can actually buy a Port Jackson shark for your aquarium, but I’m not sure why anyone would do that, as they grow over five feet long.

You can see the variety of sharks’ teeth here, and if you’re into buying recent or fossil teeth, here’s a place to start,

That’s not ratfish genitalia. That’s ratfish genitalia.

September 28, 2009 • 8:58 am

by Greg Mayer

Over at Pharyngula, PZ has linked to a story at Deep Sea News about the description of a new species of ratfish with “forehead genitals”. While it’s a great concept, the tentaculum, or cephalic claspers, of ratfish are not genitals.

Male chimaeridFig. 1. That’s not ratfish genitalia. A male ratfish (family Chimaeridae) showing the tentaculum.

The genitalia of male ratfish are the pelvic claspers, modifications of the medial side of the pelvic fins used as intromittent organs for the introduction of sperm into the female’s reproductive tract. The ratfish’s pelvic claspers are bifid and especially spectacular.

Claspers of male chimaerid.Fig. 2. That’s ratfish genitalia. A male ratfish’s (family Chimaeridae) pelvic claspers; note the bifid structure, giving the appearance distally of four claspers. The anterior of the fish is to the bottom of this photo. The medial lump anterior to the pelvic fins is the rectum, prolapsed.

For comparison, here’s a female ratfish with unmodified pelvic fins.

Female chimaeridFig. 3. A female ratfish (family Chimaeridae), showing unmodified pelvic fins.

Ratfish comprise the Holocephala, one of the two major subdivisions of the cartilaginous fishes, the Chondrichthyes, the other major subdivision being the sharks and rays (elasmobranchs). Pelvic claspers are found throughout the modern cartilaginous fishes, which therefore have internal fertilization (most bony fish have external fertilization). Although living species of sharks do not have tentacula, some fossil ones (e.g. Falcatus) did, and others had other sorts of spine encrusted bits on their front ends which may have been involved in courtship and mating.

Whether or not tentacula are genitals is a matter of the definition of genitals, of course, but the term is, to my knowledge, reserved for structures involved in the transfer and reception of gametes. If parts of the body used in courtship are considered genitals, then the throat fans of anoles and the long fingernails of turtles would have to be considered genitals, too; indeed, so would the entire human body.  Many commenters at Pharyngula  have remarked about ratfish having penises on their heads (or something to that effect), which, of course, they don’t: their genitals are in the normal place (for cartilaginous fish), alongside their pelvic fins.Female (left) and male chimaerids.

Fig. 4. A ratfish couple.

(I tried to post a short comment to this effect at Pharyngula last night, but found I wasn’t registered to do so, and then I thought, “Why talk about it, when you can show pictures”, so I waited to take some photos this morning and posted here.)