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Saber-Tooth Salmon?
Filed Under Fish Tales
MUSEUM BOSS HOOKS SABER-TOOTH SALMON — 80-MILLION-YEAR-OLD ENCHODUS PART OF ROCKS, FOSSILS EXHIBIT IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA (The Associated Press, December, 1995.)
VICTORIA, British Columbia - Mike Trask has some fish story. The director of science at the Courtenay museum, 110 miles (185 km) northwest of Victoria, has hauled in a 130-pound (60 Kg), saber-tooth salmon.
“We were finding bits and pieces for the last few years, but at first we didn’t know what it was,” Trask said. “Then we found large teeth and gill covers.”
The fossil hunter had come upon an 80-million-year-old enchodus. “It is not much different to our present salmon,” he said. “The teeth were spectacular, with a large hook to them. Scientifically, it is a predecessor to today’s salmon.”
Using the remains of the salmon, Trask figures the head alone was 12 inches (30 cm) long. The tooth was probably used for protection as well as for piercing the shells of its food. Trask said he’s not sure why salmon evolved without saber teeth.
Trask’s exhibit is one of about two dozen on display as part of the “Rocks and Fossils: Bones of the Earth” display at The Royal British Columbia Museum. The show includes everything from Courtenay’s monster salmon to the tusk of a woolly mammoth and a 17,000-year-old bison skull found in a suburban pond.
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For more information on this ancient ancestor to the salmon, check out Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchodus
And here is link to a site with some really interesting images of the creature: http://www.oceansofkansas.com/Enchodus.html
