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3 Beautiful Fish Species That Are Now Extinct

3 Beautiful Fish Species That Are Now Extinct

Written by Leisure Pro Staff
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Published on February 17, 2014

When people think of an extinct species they usually think of terrestrial animals like dodos and passenger pigeons, or perhaps even marine mammals like the hapless Steller’s Sea Cow. But many species of fish have also suffered their own extinction events, leaving behind only traces of their existence in fossil form. Here are three beautiful fish the SCUBA diver will never again see.

The Galapagos Damsel

For once, this pretty fish with its forked tail and large eye wasn’t overfshed to death but was done in by an El Nino that hit the Galapagos Islands during the 1980s. This weather phenomenon warmed the water to the point where this damselfish could no longer make a living.

Aspidorhynchus

This gar-like fish lived in the late Jurassic period and grew to about two feet long. Its torpedo-like body and V-shaped, symmetrical tail helped propel it through the water where it made meals of other fish. Its fossils seem to be easily found, which lead scientists to believe that it was one of the more successful prehistoric animals until what happened to it and its other Jurassic colleagues happened. Its name, Aspidorhynchus, comes from the Greek and means “shield snout.”

Cladoselache

This weirdly beautiful fish, whose name is from the Greek and means “branched tooth shark”, flourished throughout the late Devonian period, which was about 370 million years in the past. Though it was six feet long, scientists believe it only weighed between 25 and 50 pounds. It was a slender animal and like most modern day sharks lacked scales. The male sharks also seemed to want the reproductive organs called claspers. Its teeth were also not what a diver would be used to seeing in a modern day shark’s mouth. They weren’t jagged and fearsome but blunt. Scientists believed that Cladoselache simply grabbed its meal and gulped it down whole. Some Cladoselache fossils are so well preserved that even the internal organs can be seen, which is a rarity for any fossil, much less one as old as these are!

Leisure Pro Staff

Leisure Pro Staff

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