Amazing Creatures: The First Known Case Of A Skin-Less Shark

A shark with no skin-related structured (so no epidermis, stratum laxum, dermal denticles, or teeth) was discovered.

Seems like something straight out of a science fiction movie. Except, it’s not.

Galeus melastomus, also known as the blackmouth catshark, is a small elasmobranch distributed in the eastern Atlantic from Norway to Senegal on the outer continental shelves and upper slopes.

Here, they mainly feed on invertebrates, cephalopods, small pelagic bony fish, and other small elasmobranchs. This shark is caught in fisheries within their range and have very low or no commercial value. Back in July 2019, one individual stood out and became a scientific megastar.

The specimen was caught by trawl in central‐western Mediterranean waters in July 2019 at about 1,640 feet (500 meters) deep off Cape Carbonara in South Sardinia. A free‐swimming immature shark, it measured 302 millimeters in total length (TL) and weighed 82.7 grams in total mass (TM).

“The first reaction was a big surprise,” said lead author Antonello Mulas. “Since the specimen was so strange, at first we checked for a possible report of a new species for the Mediterranean, but it was clear that this was not the case.”