A rarely seen frilled shark known as the living fossil was caught off Australia. 
 
 A rare frilled shark, whose species dates back 80 million years, was caught in a fishing trawler off Australia's coast. 
 
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 "It's a freaky thing," Simon Boag, the chief executive officer at South East Trawl Fishing Association, told Australia's ABC Rural. "I don't think you would want to show it to little children before they went to bed." 
 
 The association said the frilled shark is often referred to as a "living fossil." It is described as having an eel-like body with three fins on its back. It gets its name from the six pairs of gill slits that give it a fringed appearance. 
 
 The shark, which reaches about 6 feet in length, has 300 needle-shaped teeth in 25 rows and it is believed to capture its prey by bending its body like a snake. This particular shark was nearly as large as they grow and caught at 2,296 feet below the surface, the association said. 
 
 "This guy was just unlucky," Boag said, since the shark was caught in shallower depths than it is usually found. 
 
 David Guillot, the captain of the Western Alliance Vessell, told radio station 3AW Drive that the shark was unlike any fish he's ever seen. 
 
 "I've been at sea for 30 years and I’ve never seen a shark that looks like that," he said. "It was like a large eel, probably 1.5 meters [5 feet] long, and the body was quite different to any other shark I'd ever seen." 
 
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 Rare and terrifying frilled shark catch in Victorian waters the first for fishermen in local living memory 
 
 Updated 
 
 The hideous, mildly terrifying and rarely sighted frilled shark has turned up in waters off south-eastern Australia. 
 
 The species, whose ancestry dates back 80 million years, is known as the 'living fossil'. 
 
 It was caught on a fishing trawler in waters near Lakes Entrance in the Victoria's Gippsland region. 
 
 Simon Boag, from the South East Trawl Fishing Association, said it was the first time in living memory that a frilled shark had been sighted. 
 
 "We couldn't find a fisherman who had ever seen one before," he said. 
 
 "It does look 80 million years old. It looks prehistoric, it looks like it's from another time!" 
 
 He said local fishermen were left scratching their heads at the sight of the two-metre-long creature, whose head and body resemble an eel, but whose tail is more reminiscent of a shark. 
 
 The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) confirmed it to be a frilled shark, and while the species is known to the scientific community, it was a nonetheless rare and bizarre find for local fishermen. 
 
 "It has 300 teeth over 25 rows, so once you're in that mouth, you're not coming out," Mr Boag said. 
 
 "Good for dentists, but it is a freaky thing. I don't think you would want to show it to little children before they went to bed." 
 
 The species has been found as deep as 1,500 metres, but generally it lives in waters shallower than 1,200 metres. 
 
 Mr Boag said this frilled shark was caught at 700 metres, but there should not be any concern about repeat catches. 
 
 "Almost all the grounds deeper than 700 metres are closed to trawling, so there wouldn't be any pressure on them and there'd be very few caught," he said. 
 
 "This guy was just unlucky." 
 
 After being declined by the CSIRO, the frilled shark has now been bought by Griffith's Sea Shell Museum in Lakes Entrance. 
 
 "It's in our freezer at the moment," said museum owner Coralie Griffiths. 
 
 "It'll be two or three weeks before it's on display." 
 
 Topics: rural, fish, animal-science, science-and-technology, fishing-aquaculture, lakes-entrance-3909 
 
 First posted
– Fishermen off the coast of Australia were startled to haul in something none of them had ever seen before: a rare species of "living fossil" shark virtually unchanged since before dinosaurs went extinct. The frilled shark they caught was around 5 feet long, almost as big as they get, reports Discovery. The creature, whose species dates back 80 million years, has a long, eel-like body with three fins on the back and has 300 teeth in 25 rows. "Once you're in that mouth, you're not coming out," a spokesman for the South East Trawl Fishing Industry Association tells ABC Rural. "Good for dentists, but it is a freaky thing. I don't think you would want to show it to little children before they went to bed." He says the rare beast, which is now with a local museum, was caught at a depth where most trawlers don't fish, so there is little danger of repeat catches. "This guy was just unlucky," he says. (Scientists recently identified a prehistoric Scottish sea monster that resembles a "sinister dolphin.")