Elasmobranchii

This week, we saw the first-ever image of a newborn great white shark; scientists figured out what’s really happening when insects fly around artificial lights; and mathematicians reversed the sprinkler. Click through for our top science stories of the week. Read more... This week, we saw the first-ever image of a newborn great white shark; scientists figured out what’s really happening when insects fly around artificial lights; and mathematicians reversed the sprinkler. Click through for our top science stories of the…

Footage taken off the coast of Santa Barbara has captured something new to science: a living newborn great white shark. The shark’s discovery could help researchers finally learn where white sharks—one of the ocean’s top predators—birth their young.Forget Collars—There's a Kinder Way to Track Polar Bears in the ArcticThe 5-foot-long pup was photographed by drone in July 2023; it was covered in a thin, whitish film, the major clue that the shark was born recently. It may have had a skin condition, the researchers say, but…

A controversy in the world of shark science has come to a close. A group of scientists who published a record of what would be the first-ever goblin shark found in the Mediterranean Sea have retracted their work. The retraction, submitted March 20, follows Gizmodo’s earlier reporting on the saga.As a brief refresher: The scientists published a short description of what they claimed was the first goblin shark in the Mediterranean, based on a single, low-quality photo provided to them by a citizen scientist in May 2022.…

A deep-sea drama is unfolding in the world of shark science. An exciting scientific record of a rare species in a new place might actually just be a photo of a plastic toy.Through published commentary, tweets, and in conversations with Gizmodo, biologists, shark enthusiasts, and other experts have expressed extreme skepticism that an alleged photo of a goblin shark really shows a once-living animal. If it were authentic, the image in question would be the first-ever record of the species in the Mediterranean Sea—a notable…

Photo: Ramon Carretero (Shutterstock)A Chinese food blogger has been fined $18,500 for cooking and eating a great white shark in a video posted online. The blogger, who goes by the name Tizi was identified by officials as Jin, who said she had bought the shark on an Alibaba-owned shopping site Taobao for 7,700 yuan ($1,141). Authorities said in a statement that Jin had bought the shark in April 2022 and posted the video on the social media platform Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) and Kuaishou. The videos quickly…