lithographette said:
As a former seafood department employee, I was under the impression that all or most sharks have sandpaper like skin, but this article mentions it as if it were an anomoly, am I wrong?
Hi Lithographette. Fantastic millipede, by the way.
Indeed, as Clem has indicated you are absolutely right. Shark's skin feels rough because it contains tiny scales known as
dermal denticles that are closely packed. These are streamlined with fluted crowns and aided with a mucus secretion from pores in the skin, maintain a laminar flow in the water. These become detatched after death but are not normally noticed as they are usually microscopic.
From a palaeontological angle (as usual), the earliest sharks are known purely from these scales and date to about 450 mya in the late Ordovician.
Phil
