Author: Bocage and Capello, 1864
Centroscymnus coelolepis Bocage and Capello, 1864
Status in World Register of Marine Species:
Accepted name: Centroscymnus coelolepis Barbosa du Bocage and de Brito Capello, 1864 (updated 2009-06-25)
Diagnosis: snout tapering smoothly to rounded tip; noticeably short, length less than mouth breadth. Large voluminous pouch at mouth corners; pre-oral clefts extending halfway to symphysis. Upper teeth with erect lanceolate cusps, lowers with broad, strongly oblique cusp. Spiracle level with upper margin of eye. Gill openings short, half eye diameter, all approximately same length. Pectoral fins short and broad; dorsal fin spine exposed at tip, interspace between dorsal fins 2-5 times base of first dorsal; caudal fin broad, tip truncate, lower lobe moderately differentiated by concave posterior margin of fin. Colour: dark brown. Size: to 120 cm.
Habitat: deepwater benthic, from 400 to 2,700 m, sluggish, prefers water at 5-6°C. Food: fishes, ?crustaceans. Reproduction: ovoviviparous; number of embryos 13-16, born at less than 20 cm.
Distribution: Morocco northward to Iceland, also western Mediterranean Elsewhere, southward to Senegal; also western North Atlantic, from north-east United States to Nova Scotia.
Eggs, embryonic and young stages. Vaillant, 1888: 66 | Bigelow and Schroeder, 1954: 48-50 (embryonic stages, dermal denticles).