15 Creatures Discovered By Fisherman In New Zealand
12.
SKATE INTO MY NIGHTMARES
Skate
via Maria Lombard on Facebook
When things have been dead for awhile it can make them hard to identify, and especially if there’s no dental records. In this case there’s no dental records because all that washed ashore was bones.
Actually not bones – cartilage, the stuff that makes up your nose and ears. It’s also the stuff that replaces bones in sharks and rays since they need to be all bendy but not break-y underwater. What came ashore on Waitarere Beach in February of 2016 may look like something out of Aliens, but it’s actually the vertebrae and braincase of a New Zealand smooth skate.
Related to sharks, the smooth skate is a bottom dweller that typically eats crustaceans along the ocean floor. This example, measuring 6.5 feet long, is on the high end for how large a skate can grow.
SKATE INTO MY NIGHTMARES
Skate
via Maria Lombard on Facebook
When things have been dead for awhile it can make them hard to identify, and especially if there’s no dental records. In this case there’s no dental records because all that washed ashore was bones.
Actually not bones – cartilage, the stuff that makes up your nose and ears. It’s also the stuff that replaces bones in sharks and rays since they need to be all bendy but not break-y underwater. What came ashore on Waitarere Beach in February of 2016 may look like something out of Aliens, but it’s actually the vertebrae and braincase of a New Zealand smooth skate.
Related to sharks, the smooth skate is a bottom dweller that typically eats crustaceans along the ocean floor. This example, measuring 6.5 feet long, is on the high end for how large a skate can grow.
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15 February 2023
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