SAN JOSÉ: Costa Rican scientists may have discovered a new species of ghost shark in Pacific waters near Cabo Blanco and Caño Island.
The latest discovery has a “shorter” snout, a “darker coloration pattern” and a “much longer spine on its dorsal fin,” according to Arturo Angulo Sibaja, a biology professor at the University of Costa Rica.
The discovery marks the only species of its type “known on the Central American coast,” Sibaja said, adding that genetic analysis indicates that the new species “has no reproductive contact” with other ghost sharks.
But specimens previously collected “near Peru and Chile are very similar to the species” from Costa Rica, so scientists are still comparing the specimens before reaching a conclusion, he said.
Three species of ghost shark (a type of fish related to sharks) have been discovered elsewhere, in waters off South Africa, Taiwan, Australia, Japan and in the Atlantic between Greenland and Brazil.
Ghost sharks belong to a group of cartilaginous fish called Rinochimaera that are related to sharks but diverged genetically from them almost 400 million years ago.
Sibaja said it is “very likely” that the new species “has a broader distribution along the (Pacific) coast of Central and South America.”
