'Living fossil' in the flesh
Flaring the gills that give the species its name, a frilled shark swims at Japan's Awashima Marine Park back in 2007.
Sightings of living frilled sharks are rare, because the fish generally remain thousands of feet beneath the water's surface.
Spotted by a fisherman, this 5.3ft (160-centimeter) shark was transferred to the marine park, where it was placed in a seawater pool.
"We think it may have come to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters," a park official said.
But the truth may never be known, since the "living fossil" died hours after it was caught.
The shark is of much interest as it appears to have changed very little since prehistoric times.
Weird Science Factoid: In 1999, Pepsi Inc paid $0.00 in income tax. Just shows you the worth of a good accountant...
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
