skates – The Artful Amoeba http://theartfulamoeba.com A blog about the weird wonderfulness of life on Earth Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:22:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.31 Bad Taxonomy Kills http://theartfulamoeba.com/2009/12/12/bad-taxonomy-kills/ http://theartfulamoeba.com/2009/12/12/bad-taxonomy-kills/#respond Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:25:20 +0000 http://frazer.northerncoloradogrotto.com/?p=2099 The common skate, Dipturus batis. Image by Misjel Decleer, published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 license. Click image for link.

The common skate, Dipturus batis. This, obviously, is the not-up side, referred to by zoologists as "ventral" (the opposite of "dorsal"). Botanists would call it "abaxial". Image by Misjel Decleer, published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 license. Click image for link.

Just in case you thought taxonomy was a strictly useless pursuit . . .

. . . and you can see how skates fit into the rest of the cartilaginous fish (fish with cartilage skeletons like sharks) here.

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