In August 2020, a strange long-nosed creature washed ashore in Greece and attracted the attention of a passerby.
Mitsukurina owstoni is a goblin shark, orScapanorhynchus, or Mitsekurina, is a deep-sea shark, the only representative of the genus of house sharks or Scapanorhynchus, the only survivor of the family of Scapanorhynchus sharks. In many Internet sources it is referred to as a goblin shark.
But soon after the study's findings were published in 2022 in the journalMediterranean Marine Science, experts expressed doubts about the authenticity of the sample. Critics have noted that the shark bears a striking resemblance to a plastic toy you can buy ateBay.
Comparison of the mysterious goblin shark found on a beach in Greece (above) with a juvenile female
M. owstoni found off the coast of Japan. Image credit: Yannis Papadakis (top) and Nicholas Straube (bottom)
Goblin sharks live near the seabedoff the continental shelves in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and, according to the Marine Conservation Society, many of them are observed off the coast of Japan. The first specimen was identified in 1898 and was considered the smallest specimen known to date. Its length was 107 cm. Thus, the fact that the size of the current sample was originally only 80 cm was noteworthy and caused mistrust among scientists.
Jürgen Pollerspack, founder and editorShark References, a database of records of sharks and other cartilaginous fish, and a volunteer at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich, Germany, added a photo of a beached goblin shark to the file cabinet in July 2022, but ;read the study only three months later.
This prompted the scientist and his colleaguespost a comment on the original study on March 13th. They concluded that the goblin shark was unlikely to be a “natural specimen.”
Experts say this situation highlightsThere are serious shortcomings in the formal peer review process by which scientific research is reviewed by scientists in the field. One problem is the lax standards of some journals. In addition, experts are not compensated for reviewing. All of this increases the likelihood that reviewers will be too hasty to avoid spending a lot of time scrutinizing the study results for flaws.
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On the cover: head of a goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni), Diane Bray/Victoria Museum, CC BY 3.0 AU, Wikimedia Commons