India, June 7 -- T he Australasian narrow-nosed spookfish, a species of ghost shark, newly identified in 2024, has a lineage so ancient, its ancestors existed before our current North Star (Polaris, which assumed mass 50 million years ago). It existed before the first trees evolved, before dinosaurs and flowering plants. It was around, in fact, as far back as 375 million years ago. It's small, for a shark; only about 3.5 ft long. What has helped it survive is its ultra-slow metabolism, which lets it conserve energy in the deep seas; and its trademark long snout, filled with sensory pores that detect hard-to-find crustaceans and molluscs to feed on. Because it has always lived in deep-ocean environments, it remained largely immune to catastr...