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“The Sturddlefish that Shouldn’t Exist”
Novelecology.com
“One hundred and eighty million years of evolution stand between the Russian sturgeon and the American paddlefish; Stegosaurus was yet to appear when the two turned down separate evolutionary paths. Taxonomically, they are members of entirely different fish families: as much difference as human and howler monkey. Hybridisation seems so unlikely that it has been standard practice in the caviar industry to use a radiation-damaged version of the pairing to make infertile caviar-producing sturgeons. So scientists were astonished when undamaged sperm and egg combined to create an impossible-seeming hybrid which bridges nearly two hundred million years of divergence: the sturddlefish.”
Miles Kitching
The paper can be found here
