This strange False shark ray (Rhynchorhina mauritaniensis) with a rounded snout represents a new genus and a new species described from three preserved specimens collected in shallow waters from Banc d' Arguin, off Mauritania, in the Easter Central Atlantlc, Africa.
Rhinid (Rhinidae) species are called ‘wedgefishes’ because of their distinctive wedge-shaped snout, but are also called giant guitarfishes and sharkfin guitarfishes. Wedgefishes are widespread and common in inshore tropical waters of the Eastern Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and Western Pacific.
This new species is the second wedgefish for the Eastern Central Atlantic, and now share the coast with the common West African wedgefish Rhynchobatus lübberti who is found in coastal waters from Mauritania to Congo.
FTR- The genus Rhynchorhina is composite by Rhynchobatus and Rhina to indicate that the new genus exhibits features of both genera, having a Rhynchobatus-like body with a rounded snout resembling Rhina.
. Rhynchorhina mauritaniensis has three small thorns at tip, photo by Bernard Séret.
Although very rare, and so far endemic to the Banc d’Arguin National Park off Mauritania, this strange ray was known to the native Imragen people who have a name in Hassaniya Arabic for this fish: girhgette lemdaken, meaning guitarfish with rounded snout. Since the first available record (in 1998), six specimens have been reliably recorded, but only three have been preserved and only one preserved well enough to enable the scientific description.
Photographs by B. Valadou
Scientific illustration by J.F. Dejouannet
Reference: Séret & Naylor. 2016. Rhynchorhina mauritaniensis, a new genus and species of wedgefish from the eastern central Atlantic (Elasmobranchii: Batoidea: Rhinidae). Zootaxa.
