304 Shark and Company 



The Mackerel shark ( Lamna nasus ) . 



Courtesy, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology 



Its scientific name, Larmia, incidentally, comes from a Greek word for 

 a man-eating monster Greek parents threatened to sick on naughty 

 children to make them behave. 



L. ?2asus is found in the continental waters of the northern Atlantic, 

 on the eastern side from the North Sea to South Africa, and on the 

 western side from the Newfoundland Banks to New Jersey, and perhaps 

 South Carolina. It is also found in the Mediterranean. A similar Pacific 

 species {Larrnia ditropis) is abundant in the waters of the Pacific North- 

 west, from Alaska to northern California, and is common off southern 

 California. It is sometimes called the Salmon shark in Alaska because of 

 its depredations on that fish. On the western side of the Pacific, it is 

 found in temperate seas. 



Family Cetorhinidae— Basking Sharks 

 One wintry day in 1939, the bleached bones of a huge animal were 

 found on a beach near Provincetown, Massachusetts. The skeleton was 

 about 25 feet long and, though its huge skull looked fish-like, the bones 

 of stubby legs were attached to the strange creature. Soon the cry of 

 "■sea serpentr went up on Cape Cod . . . 



What lay on the beach that day were the remains of a Basking shark 

 (Cetorhinus maximus Gunnems, 1765), a mighty fish second in size 

 only to its colossal but actually distant relative, the Whale shark 

 (Rhincodon typus). The Basking shark is also known as the Elephant 

 shark. Bone shark, Sailfish shark, and Sunfish. 



When the body of a Basking shark washes ashore, the natural de- 

 composition of its great bulk produces a kind of metamorphosis from 

 which emerges the outline of a "sea serpent." For, all that is left after 

 decomposition is completed are the cartilage of the oblong skull, the 

 long backbone, the remains of the big pectorals and, if it is a male, the 

 3-foot-long claspers. Because of their location on the skeleton, the pec- 

 torals and the claspers look hke the "legs" of the sea serpent. 



