The pointy-nosed blue chimaera, or ghost shark, was filmed alive for the first time ever off the coasts of Hawaii and California. The deep-sea fish was previously known only from specimens caught in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post) 
 
 Like its Greek mythological namesake, the chimaera — or “ghost shark” — is a mysterious, rarely seen creature with a patchwork of bizarre features. 
 
 Dwelling in the depths of the ocean, its eyes are pale and seemingly dead. Where teeth should be, the ghost shark uses tooth plates instead to grind food. 
 
 Their heads are lined with cryptic dots, like the remnant scars of ancient stitches. Male chimaeras have retractable sex organs — on their foreheads. 
 
 Its other nicknames — ratfish, rabbitfish, spookfish — hint at how bizarre chimaeras are in appearance. 
 
 And now, scientists believe they have captured on video a species of ghost shark that had never before been filmed live: the pointy-nosed blue chimaera. 
 
 The actual video was taken in 2009 but was only recently released by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, along with a paper by researcher Lonny Lundsten and his colleagues at the institute. 
 
 Six years ago, researchers from the nonprofit sent an ROV, or remotely operated vehicle, on several dives off the waters of central California and Hawaii. 
 
 The ROVs captured footage from depths of up to 6,700 feet. What they returned with surprised researchers: On film was what appeared to be a species of ghost shark previously only caught in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. 
 
 [Record-breaking Maryland fish weighs more than the girl who caught it] 
 
 According to his paper, Lundsten consulted with three chimaera experts who watched the video from the diving expeditions. All believed the fish was, in fact, a pointy-nosed blue chimaera. 
 
 Still, Lundsten and others from the Monterey Bay Aquarium institute can't be 100 percent certain that the fish captured on video is a pointy-nosed blue chimaera, despite their similar physical characteristics. Because of that, the paper refers to the fish they recorded as Hydrolagus cf. trolli, rather than its scientific name, Hydrolagus trolli. 
 
 To be absolutely sure, researchers would have to capture the ghost shark and bring it back to the surface, the institute said. 
 
 “This is much easier said than done, because these fish are generally too large, fast, and agile to be caught,” the institute notes. “If and when the researchers can get their hands on one of these fish, they will be able to make detailed measurements of its fins and other body parts and perform DNA analysis on its tissue.” 
 
 Doing so would either allow them to remove the “cf.” from the species description — or lead to perhaps an even more exciting alternative: that they discovered a new species of ghost shark. 
 
 [This nearly 1,700-pound shark is being tracked off the Virginia coast] 
 
 “If these animals turn out to be the same species as the ghost sharks recently identified off California, it will be further evidence that, like many deep-sea animals, the pointy-nosed blue chimaera can really get around,” the institute said. 
 
 The pointy-nosed blue chimaera was first discovered by researcher Dominique Didier Dagit in 2002, in the deep waters around Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. 
 
 Dagit, then an assistant curator of ichthyology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, told the Associated Press in 2002 that she named her discovery Hydrolagus trolli after Alaskan artist Ray Troll because they shared a love for ratfish. 
 
 ''It's kind of nice to be able to name a species for someone,'' Dagit told the AP. ''I thought, 'Here's my chance to name a fish for someone who's really interested.' . . . It kind of looks like him, [but with] less facial hair.'' 
 
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 Do shark attacks swing elections? ||||| A 280-million-year-old skull of a so-called ghost shark has helped researchers determine exactly how chimaeras — mysterious, mostly deep-sea fish with wing-like fins and pointy snouts — are related to sharks, a new study finds. 
 
 The ancient skull, belonging to the 4-foot-long (1.2 meters) shark-like fish Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni, was a rare find, as this animal's skeleton is made of cartilage, which rarely fossilizes, the researchers said. An anatomical examination showed that the animal had a surprising number of similarities to modern chimaeras — also called ghost sharks for their silvery white exterior and overall appearance — suggesting that the two types of creature are related, the researchers said. 
 
 "Chimaeras are ancient specialists, now anchored within a large and very distinctive group of early shark-like fishes that thrived in the late Paleozoic era," said the study's lead researcher Michael Coates, a professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. "We now have a glimpse of the preconditions from which modern chimaeras evolved, suggesting that the large eyes of these early sharks predisposed chimaeras for low-light, deep-sea habits." [Photos: The Freakiest-Looking Fish] 
 
 A 3D printout of the Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni brain case. Credit: Coates, et al. Nature (2017) 
 
 Little is known about chimaeras, which are also called ratfish. Scientists aren't sure what chimaeras eat, how long they live or how often they reproduce. But based on chimaeras that have washed ashore or been caught as bycatch, researchers know that these fish have cartilaginous skeletons, indicating that the mysterious animals are related to sharks and rays, which also have cartilaginous bodies. 
 
 An artist's interpretation of Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni, a type of symmoriid shark now known to be an early chimaera. Credit: Kristen Tietjen 
 
 But beyond that, the chimaeras' evolutionary origins were a real mystery, the researchers said. 
 
 However, Coates had an inkling that a fossil in South Africa could help solve the mystery, he said. Roy Oosthuizen, an amateur fossil collector, discovered the specimen on his farm in Cape Province, South Africa, in the 1980s, and it had stayed at the South African Museum in Cape Town ever since. 
 
 The specimen had been described on a rudimentary level, but Coates wanted to learn more about it, so he asked his colleague and co-author Rob Gess, of the South African Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences, to examine it. 
 
 Gess used a micro computed-tomography (CT) scanner (which produces more detailed images than a regular CT scanner) to create a virtual 3D image of the skull and its braincase, the area where the brain sat. 
 
 Intriguingly, some of D. oosthuizeni's braincase structures, including its major cranial nerves, nostrils and inner ear resembled those seen in modern chimaeras, the researchers found. 
 
 The rock nodule containing the fossil that amateur paleontologist and farmer Roy Oosthuizen found in the 1980s in South Africa. Credit: Rob Gess 
 
 For instance, "in all modern sharks and rays, the cartilage roof of the skull is open at the front," Coates told Live Science in an email. "But in chimaeras and Dwykaselachus, this roof is closed. And further details of the labyrinth of tubes and ducts that contain the semicircular canals of the inner ear are also shared." 
 
 The discovery indicates that the evolutionary lineage leading to chimaeras is rooted deeply within this group of early shark-like fishes, of which Dwykaselachus is a late, but anatomically conservative, representative, Coates said. 
 
 "For many years, the relationship of modern chimaeras to the early fossil record of sharks has been a puzzle," Coates said. Now, researchers know that D. oosthuizeni was an early chimaera, he said. 
 
 "Dwykaselachus allows us to connect the pieces and provides a time point for divergences, splits between major vertebrate groups in the tree of life," Coates said. 
 
 The study was published online today (Jan. 4) in the journal Nature. 
 
 Original article on Live Science. ||||| November 4, 2016 
 
 The deep sea is the largest contiguous habitat on the earth, covering two thirds of the earth’s surface and averaging over 3.5 kilometers deep. Because most deep-ocean waters are connected, many species of deep-sea animals have huge geographic ranges. For example, one deep-sea fish that was previously identified in the Southeastern Pacific has recently been found around the Hawaiian Islands and off the coast of Central California, according to a new paper by MBARI researcher Lonny Lundsten and his colleagues. 
 
 Scientists call this unusual fish Hydrolagus trolli, but its common name is the pointy-nosed blue chimaera. First named in 2002, it is known to live in deep waters around Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia. But until the recent paper, it had not been officially identified anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. 
 
 Chimaeras are unusual fishes. Like sharks, their bodies are not stiffened by bones, but by plates and bone-like bits of cartilage. Like the chimaera from Greek mythology, which had a goat’s head, a serpent’s tail, and a lion’s body, chimaeras are pretty weird looking. Even the common names for this group—ghost sharks, rabbitfishes, and ratfishes—sound like creatures one might see at Halloween. However, chimaeras are relatively common and widespread in the deep sea, with 38 known species around the world. 
 
 In 2009, MBARI researchers worked with scientists at the California Academy of Sciences and Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) to identify a new species of ghost shark in the Gulf of California. Some of these same researchers had also seen ghost sharks during remotely operated vehicle (ROV) dives off Central California. They weren’t sure about the exact species, but they knew the fish did not look like either of the two species of ghost sharks previously identified from off the California coast. 
 
 In a recent paper in Marine Biodiversity Records, Lundsten and his colleagues presented evidence that the unidentified ghost shark they were seeing around Monterey Bay was, in fact the same species that had previously been identified only in the Southwestern Pacific. The paper cited three different chimaera experts who viewed the video from MBARI ROV dives and said that they believed the fish was a “pointy-nosed blue chimaera.” 
 
 In their paper, researchers refer to the fish as Hydrolagus cf. trolli. The letters cf. indicate that the researchers believe the physical characteristics of the fish they saw closely match the official species description for Hydrolagus trolli. Their alternative hypothesis is that the fish in MBARI’s videos are an entirely new species of ghost shark. 
 
 The researchers note that they can’t positively identify the ghost sharks in the ROV video without actually collecting one of them and bringing it back to the surface. This is much easier said than done, because these fish are generally too large, fast, and agile to be caught by MBARI’s ROVs. If and when the researchers can get their hands on one of these fish, they will be able to make detailed measurements of its fins and other body parts and perform DNA analysis on its tissue. This would allow them to either remove the cf. from their species description, or assign the fish to a new species altogether. 
 
 Similar looking, but as yet unidentified, ghost sharks have also been seen off the coasts of South America and Southern Africa, as well as in the Indian Ocean. If these animals turn out to be the same species as the ghost sharks recently identified off California, it will be further evidence that, like many deep-sea animals, the pointy-nosed blue chimaera can really get around. 
 
 Article by Kim Fulton-Bennett 
 
 Original journal article: 
 
 Reichert, A. N., Lundsten, L., & EBERT, D. A. (2016). First North Pacific records of the pointy nosed blue chimaera, Hydrolagus cf. trolli (Chondrichthyes: Chimaeriformes: Chimaeridae). Marine Biodiversity Records, 1–5. http://doi.org/10.1186/s41200-016-0095-5 
 
 Video about the newly expanded range for the pointy-nosed blue chimaera:
– The chimaera, or so-called "ghost shark," is an elusive deep-water fish that has fascinated biologists for more than a century. Like its relative the shark, however, it's made of cartilage and thus rarely fossilizes, so little is known about its evolutionary past, reports Live Science. Now the blanks have been filled in thanks to a "remarkable" 280 million-year-old fossil found on a farm in Cape Province, South Africa, in the 1980s that was thought to be a symmoriid shark. Researchers at the University of Chicago Medical Center report in a ScienceDaily news release that the specimen—micro CT scan images of which one reviewer describes as "dripping with data"—is actually an early chimaera, not a shark. The specimen offers "a glimpse of the preconditions from which modern chimaeras evolved." Reporting in the journal Nature, the team says the fossil establishes strong links between the brains, major cranial nerves, nostrils, and inner ears of early and modern chimaeras. We're learning more about elusive modern chimaeras, too: Scientists recently said they think they've captured video of a type of ghost shark never filmed before; the Washington Post published the footage of what's believed to be a pointy-nosed blue chimaera last month. Filmed off the coast of central California, it's the first seen outside the Pacific waters of Australia and New Zealand, suggesting widespread populations. Scientists have yet to work out what chimaeras eat, how often they reproduce, or even how long they live. (Researchers who filmed the ghost shark say it came down to "dumb luck.")