Author: (Goode and Bean, 1896)
Field Marks:
Thick snout, anteriorly extended mouth with expanded dental bands, rather large gill slits, narrow internarial, erect denticles and fuzzy skin texture, high rounded fins, caudal crest.
Diagnostic Features:
Body relatively slender, trunk slightly tapering toward head. Snout moderately long, very broad, and bell-shaped, preoral snout about 9% of total length; gill slits moderately large but longest somewhat less than eye length; gill septa without projecting medial lobes or pleats, but well-incised; eyes rather small, about 3% of total length; nostrils broad, their width about equal to internarial space; incurrent and excurrent apertures rather narrowly oval, anterior nasal flaps low and broadly triangular; mouth moderately long, large, and broadly arched, with dental bands partly expanded and with lower ones falling just behind uppers; mouth and labial furrows extending well in front of eyes; labial folds somewhat enlarged, with lower nearly transverse to body axis. Interdorsal space slightly greater than first dorsal base, about two-thirds of preorbital snout; first dorsal fin about as large as second, bases about equally long; origin of first dorsal slightly behind pelvic midbases; second dorsal insertion about opposite anal insertion; pectoral fins rather small, anterior margins about 11% of total length; inner margins fairly long, about half length of pectoral bases; interspace between pectoral and pelvic bases moderately long, slightly less than prespiracular length and about 15% of total length; pelvic fins high and broadly rounded; anal fin moderately long, fairly high, and subangular, short, high and rounded, slightly more than three times as long as high, its base slightly greater than prespiracular space and 14% of total length; caudal fin fairly broad, with a well-developed crest of enlarged denticles on dorsal caudal margin, with crest denticles directed obliquely downward. Lateral trunk denticles of body with crowns partly erect, giving skin surface a feltlike or fuzzy texture. Colour brownish, probably dark brown in life. Adults moderately large, as adolescent male is 51 cm long.
Geographical Distribution:
Western North Atlantic: Off Delaware Bay (Atlantic coast of USA). ? Eastern North Atlantic: Mauritania.
Habitat and Biology:
A poorly-known species, from the western Atlantic continental slopes at 1492 m; depth range in the eastern North Atlantic (if this species and not A. manis) 1300 to 1600 m.
Size:
Adolescent at 51 cm, maximum unknown.
Interest to Fisheries:
None.
Remarks:
This catshark is only known for certain from the badly preserved holotype, which is here illustrated from original drawings by the writer. Springer (1966) had previously mistaken another species for A. profundorum, but later (1979) redescribed it as Parmaturus manis. This was supposed to differ from A. profundorum in having a caudal crest of enlarged denticles, but examination of the holotype of A. profundorum showed that it too has a noticeable caudal crest.
It is uncertain whether eastern Atlantic records of A. profundorum by Golovan (1976, 1978) are this species or A. manis.
Type material:
Holotype: U.S. National Museum of Natural History, USNM 35646, 510 mm adolescent male. Type Locality: Off Delaware Bay, in 1492 m depth.