#squalidae

Wanted to ask if you had anything for spiny dogfish. I got to dissect one for a zoology class once and I thought it was pretty neat.

Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthias), family Squalidae, order Squaliformes, found in coastal areas around the world, especially in temperate and subtropical regions

AKA Spurdog, Mud Shark, or Piked Dogfish

photograph by Doug Costa, NOAA/SBNMS 

In the last week two shark species are described, from the Agulhas Bank in South Africa, the Long-snouted African spurdog (Squalus bassi) is described based on material collected from the outer shelf and upper continental slope off South Africa and Mozambique. This new species has been misidentified as the Japanese Shortspine spurdog and the Mediterranean Longnose Spurdog due to the lack of comparative morphological analyses, but can be distinguished from all its congeners by a combination of body and fin colouration.

-  Squalus bassi in lateral and ventral views.

And from Papua New Guinea based on two specimens collected during recent deepwater surveys researchers found a new species belongs to the longicephalus-group which is characterised by its very long snout. The Yang’s Longnose Catshark (Apristurus yangi)

-  Body and head of Apristurus yangi, adult female in lateral view and ventral view.

Viana et al. 2017. Squalus bassi sp. nov., a new long-snouted spurdog (Chondrichthyes: Squaliformes: Squalidae) from the Agulhas Bank. Journal of Fish Biology.