New museum find shows nature can’t stop inventing seahorses

A CT scan of __Australyichthys aegis_. Graham Short, CC BY-NC At first glance it looks exactly like a seahorse. It has the same horse-shaped head tilted down from the body, the same curled and grasping tail, and in the males a fully enclosed pouch for brooding the young. But this little fish, no longer than your thumb, is not a seahorse, as we report in our new study published in the Journal of Lost Species. This is Australyichthys aegis, a newly described fish from the deep reefs off southern…