Free Republic

'The remora sucker is a truly amazing anatomical specialisation but, strange as it may seem, it evolved from a spiny fin,' said Dr Matt Friedman of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences, lead author of the report. 'In this fossil the fin is clearly modified as a disc but is found on the back of the fish. It enables us to say that first fin spines on the back broadened to form wide segments of a suction disc. After the disc evolved, it migrated to the skull, and it was there that individual segments became divided in two, the number...

While diving in the harbor of a small island in Indonesia recently, husband and wife Buck and Fitrie Randolph, with dive guide Toby Fadirsyair, found a strange fish and took some pictures. The oddball creature looks like an anglerfish, but different. Its eyes, unlike those of nearly all fish, point forward and may allow the fish to gauge depth the way humans do. The flat fish has tan- and peach-colored stripes and rippling folds of skin that obscure its fins. About the size of a human fist, it is soft and pliable enough to slip into narrow crevices of coral...