Pre-historic Ghost Sharks Older Than The Dinosaurs Live 6,000 Miles Deep Under Californian Seas
It was a find that could have taken a page out of Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park," mixed with various legends and tales spoken about the Loch Ness monster over the centuries. But this time these supposedly prehistoric creatures are real and thriving in modern-day Earth, with no less than National Geographic vouching for their existence. After six years since taking the footage, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research is now releasing videos of the chimaera, the so-called ghost sharks that swam the world's oceans centuries before the dinosaur.
National Geographic was the first to publish photos of the Hydrolagus trolli or the chimaera. According to Tech Times, the video capture of the shark was a turn of luck, as the underwater probes that the institute had sent that day were not really expecting to discover a creature like it. That the shark was thriving in California waters, and possibly Hawaii was another extraordinary discovery. It was documented to exist in regions at the other side of the world, namely Australia and New Zealand. Confirmation of its existence in the Northern Hempishere would make that find another first. Right now, a DNA would have to verify that the ghost sharks in the video are indeed the chimaera of ancient earth.
Meanwhile, Crossmap says that the "color, snout, slender shaped body, head shape and fins of the fish in the video" accurately matched the description of the prehistoric chimaera in a journal published by The Marine Biodiversity Records. Chimaera feeds on the smaller prey that has made the undersea ecosystem their home. Another trait that makes them distinct is the male species' sexual structure. Its organ is retractable and sprouts on its forehead.
Descendants of chimaera can debunk the popular notion that dinosaurs were the first creatures to have walked this planet. In fact, earlier studies have suggested that they were preceded by entities known as the lagerpetids. In the meantime, science awaits for a DNA test to welcome this deep-sea creature from the annals of scientific prehistory to modern zoology.
