Portuguese dogfish
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| Portuguese dogfish | ||||||||||||||||
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| Centroscymnus coelolepis Barbosa du Bocage & Brito Capello, 1864 |
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 Range of the Portuguese dogfish (in blue)
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The Portuguese dogfish, Centroscymnus coelolepis, is a sleeper shark of the family Dalatiidae, found circumglobally on continental slopes and abyssal plains between latitudes 64° N and 48° S, at depths of between 150 and 3,700 m. It reaches a length of 1.2 m.
The Portuguese dogfish has dorsal fins with very small spines, very short snout, lanceolate upper teeth and bladelike lower teeth with short, oblique cusps. It has a stocky body that does not taper abruptly from the pectoral region, very large lateral trunk denticles with smooth, circular, acuspidate crowns in adults and subadults.
Coloration is uniformly golden brown to dark brown.
The Portuguese dogfish is ovoviviparous with 13 to 29 pups in a litter, born at lengths of 27 to 31 cm.
It feeds mainly on fish (including sharks) and cephalopods, and also gastropods and cetacean meat.
The flesh is utilized as fishmeal, dried and salted for human consumption, and is a source of squalene.
[edit] References
- "Centroscymnus coelolepis". FishBase. Ed. Ranier Froese and Daniel Pauly. June 2006 version. N.p.: FishBase, 2006.
