Freakish 3ft long sea ‘dinosaur’ with hard-plate armour found washed up on beach

He captioned a photo of the fish on Facebook: “This 37-inch fish is a true member of the dinosaurs.

“It has no scales only rows of hard plates called scutes. A bottom feeder, it will eat almost anything including clams, mussels, and dead fish.

“Under its chin are four whiskers called barbels which are used to sense the bottom for food. The mouth is hard and bony with no teeth.

“This is a small one, researchers have found them up to 160 pounds in the rivers and tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay and [they] can weigh over a thousand pounds in other parts of the world.

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