(With thanks to our shark-loving IT guru Mats for bringing this to my attention).

Ancient Shark
The ancient shark © Awashima Marine Park
A Japanese Marine Park has released rare footage of a prehistoric deep-sea shark (a predecessor of the current model, I presume, being more like an eel) in motion. The shark was captured, put in a tank, filmed and then -- not surprisingly -- kicked the bucket. The poor thing was way outside its natural habitat. According to Scientific American, an official at the park said, "We believe moving pictures of a live specimen are extremely rare. They live between 600 and 1,000 meters under the water, which is deeper than humans can go." I don't really understand why they then had to cram the bewildered relic into a tank. I'm all for science but I'm not sure what exactly this achieved, other than to make me feel very sad at humankind's propensity to kill off anything interesting (I'm still getting over those NASA scientists who think they might have accidentally killed evidence of life on Mars).

You can check out the video of the shark here at Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet's site - look for an article called "Förhistorisk haj hittad i Japan" (Prehistoric shark found in Japan).