Image courtesy of MV Erdmann
Joel Kontinen
Sharks are living fossils that defy the cause of evolution. Walking sharks are not new in evolution, but this one is new to science.
Sharks in
the genus Hemiscyllium, commonly known as walking sharks or epaulette
sharks, use their pectoral fins like legs to move around and are only known to
be in Australia and New Guinea.
The new
species has been named Hemiscyllium dudgeonae after Christine Dudgeon at the University of the
Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, who was part of the team that formally
identified it.
She first
encountered the shark after midnight one day in March 2025, swimming in just a
metre of water covering a meadow of seagrass in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea.
Dudgeon was
looking for a different species, Hemiscyllium michaeli, known to inhabit
nearby waters. “Because it was so late and I had been in the water for a while,
I was a bit over it,” she says. “Then I just saw one swimming along the
bottom.”
She shone
her torch in front of the shark, which was nearly three-quarters of a metre
long, making it freeze as a defensive response. Then she grabbed it and gently
employed a jiujitsu-like move that researchers call the “flip and tuck”. “You
sort of just flip them over and tuck the tail under your armpit and it stops
them from wriggling away,” she says.
Once the
shark was secure, she handed it over to her colleague, Jess Blakeway, who was in a boat drifting nearby.
The species
that the team had been expecting to find has a more leopard-like pattern. “This
new one has got lots of spots and dashes that reminded me of braille or
morse code,” says Blakeway.
Source:
James Woodford 2026 Walking shark found in Papua New Guinea is new to science | New Scientist 16 June
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