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What in the world are we doing to our oceans?? (Original Post) yuiyoshida Jul 2014 OP
The back story of this creature - Cyclops shark csziggy Jul 2014 #1

csziggy

(34,120 posts)
1. The back story of this creature - Cyclops shark
Sun Jul 6, 2014, 10:34 PM
Jul 2014
The 22-inch-long (56-centimeter-long) fetus has a single, functioning eye at the front of its head—the hallmark of a congenital condition called cyclopia, which occurs in several animal species, including humans.

Earlier this year fisher Enrique Lucero León legally caught a pregnant dusky shark near Cerralvo Island (see map) in the Gulf of California. When León cut open his catch, he found the odd-looking male embryo along with its nine normal siblings. "He said, That's incredible—wow," said biologist Felipe Galván-Magaña, of the Interdisciplinary Center of Marine Sciences in La Paz, Mexico.

Once Galván-Magaña and colleague Marcela Bejarano-Álvarez heard about the discovery—which was put on Facebook—the team got León's permission to borrow the shark for research. The scientists then x-rayed the fetus and reviewed previous research on cyclopia in other species to confirm that the find is indeed a cyclops shark.

Cyclops sharks have been documented by scientists a few times before, also as embryos, said Jim Gelsleichter, a shark biologist at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. The fact that none have been caught outside the womb suggests cyclops sharks don't survive long in the wild.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/10/pictures/111013-shark-albino-one-eyed-fetus/
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