A strange fish caught in the Canadian Arctic and thought originally by some to have been a goblin shark has been identified.
Pictures of the odd-looking specimen, which was caught by fishermen in Davis Strait in Nunavut, the northernmost territory in Canada, appeared on Facebook and soon went viral.
But now a University of Windsor researcher has identified it as a Longnose chimaera.
Nigel Hussey told CBC News that this fish is rarely caught, so remains something of a mystery.
"Only one of these fish has previously been documented from the Hudson Strait," he said. "Potentially, if we fish deeper, maybe between 1,000 and 2,000 metres, we could find that's there's actually quite a lot of them there. We just don't know."
Long-nosed chimaera are cartilaginous fish with an extremely long pointed snout. The family name of Rhinochimaeridae comes from the Greek words rhinos = nose and chimaera = monster. Maximum length is around 1m/40" depending on the species — there are eight currently described.
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