Name These New Mystery Species
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 16th, 2011
Can you give the common and scientific names of the species pictured below?
Found beached in Oahu, Hawaii.
Found in a ravine in Maine.
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Hello,
The second pic is an dead Hypostomus plecostomus. It lives normaly in South America. But today them are a an invasive species (mostly released from aquarium ) and live in North America too.
Most of the Hypostomus sold in the pet trade are “breed” in Florida or wild caught in the Everglades.
The first pic is a Pezosaurus right?
I think I have seen that second fish before I just can’t remember the name.
Is that the whole tail?
Holy Cow! At that serpent like creature!
Neither fish are mysterious.
The first is indeed a Hypostomus, species is indeterminate though because you need to be able to do a fin ray count to be 100% sure. Nothing unusual about finding it in Maine either as someone probably dumped their aquarium residents when they got tired of them. The fish died when the water temps dropped below 50F. Looks like a scavenger got hold of the body.
The second fish is a Gymnothorax Moray Eel. Most probably Gymnothorax rueppellii…a common Moray in Hawaii.
Yes, cryptoheros67, I agree, their individual identities are a “mystery” to those taking the photographs, thus the use of that label, not “mysterious.”
Oh man!
Being a very-non-icthyologist, I would *hate* to have a cool find in a Maine ravine chilled down like that by this blog.