Ghost Sharks Use Teeth on Their Forehead to Have Deep

Are those teeth on your forehead or are you just happy to see me? In the curious case of chimaeras, also called ghost sharks, the answer is 'both.'

These forehead-teeth are attached to a retractable stalk called a tenaculum, and they help chimaeras have sex. Because of course.

Whether these nodules are true teeth in every sense of the word, or some kind of dermal protrusion, has never been clear. So biologists Karly Cohena and Gareth Fraser from the University of Florida and Michael Coates from the University of Chicago took a closer look at this most unusual marine creature.

Chimaeras are strange, sometimes venomous deep-sea fish that sport an evolutionarily unique body part, the tenaculum, an appendage that extends from the males' forehead like a retractable Rolls-Royce hood ornament