The waters around Australia aren't the only ones offering up new shark species. And I think there's another one in Western Australia, it's either new or it's a new record of a species poorly known from elsewhere in the world," says White. "I've got a feeling there's another one from Queensland, it's new, from the same genus. "We've actually found another new species of that same genus, also with ridged egg cases, but different ridged egg cases off Queensland. The demon catshark is not the only new catshark species to have turned up. Horn sharks tend to like living in shallow waters, often sitting on the seafloor in kelp forests, but this new species was found at 150m (500ft).īut that's nothing compared to what may lie ahead, White says. Another species, a type of horn shark, was caught in surprisingly deep waters off Western Australia in a survey last year. The demon catshark was not the only discovery White had a part in identifying recently. "The other thing, unfortunately, is you do get some specimens in collections that all you got is the fixed specimen, you don't actually have a fresh photo that demon catshark we described was lucky because we had a fresh photo as well." He says the current experts on this group of sharks all "liaise with each other and talk with each other" because identifying new species can be such a challenge. ![]() After being discovered during a survey at Rowley Shoals, the egg cases had been disseminated to museum archives without anyone looking much further into the cases' strange ridges. Will White, the senior curator of Australian National Fish Collection at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in Hobart, Australia, was part of the team that connected the dots. Take the shark that laid the mysterious ridged egg cases, for instance. It is as much a by-product of painstaking work in the archives of museum collections as it is peering into the deep waters of the world's oceans. This new wave of discovery rivals that of the golden ages of exploration.
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