Of the more important genera, Trygon (Dasyatis) is represented by numerous species in the tropical parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including the Pacific coasts of North and South America. Two species occur in the Mediterranean, and one of them (T. pastinaca), ranges from the coasts of Norway and the British Isles through the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to Japan. Urogymnus frequents the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Urolophus includes a few species of small size, distributed along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central and North America, and in Australian seas. Pteroplatea comprises rather large species, and is almost cosmopolitan in its distribution, being represented by species on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North and South America, in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Malay Archipelago, and on the coasts of China and Japan. The caudal spines, which may be 8 to 9 inches long in some of the larger species, are capable of inflicting very severe wounds, the danger of which is greatly increased by the apparently poisonous cutaneous mucus introduced into the wound. As the spines become lost they are replaced by others developed from behind. Some Trygonidae live in fresh waters. Trygon (Dasyatis) sabina frequents the streams and estuaries of Florida as well as on the adjacent coasts, and specimens have been obtained from Lake Munroe at some distance from salt water.[[547]] Ellipesurus and Paratrygon are freshwater genera, found in Colombia, Venezuela, and Guiana.
Fossil remains of undoubted Trygonidae appear to be confined to the Tertiary period.
Fam. 7. Myliobatidae (Eagle-Rays).—Disc much broader than long, and rhombic in shape. The huge pectoral fins are not continued to the extremity of the snout, but cease on the sides of the head, and reappear in front of the snout as a pair of distinct folds, the so-called cephalic fins. The head projects above the level of the disc, and consequently the eyes and spiracles are lateral in position. Tail long, slender, and whip-like, with a single dorsal fin near the root, and usually one or two serrated spines behind the fin. A rectangular naso-frontal fold is present. The dentition consists of flat, hexagonal, pavement-like crushing teeth arranged from before backward in arched rows in both jaws, and there is either a single median row of large teeth, with (e.g. Myliobatis) or without (e.g. Aëtobatis) the addition of several rows of much smaller teeth on each side, or there are numerous rows, the teeth then decreasing in size from the middle line laterally (e.g. Rhinoptera). Skin smooth. Sexes similar. Five genera and about twenty-seven species are known; all inhabitants of tropical and subtropical seas.
Myliobatis is represented in the Mediterranean by two species, and one of them, the almost cosmopolitan M. aquila (Fig. 266), has been taken at various points on the eastern and southern coasts of England. Aëtobatis is also widely distributed in tropical seas, but is unknown in European waters. Rhinoptera has one species in the Mediterranean, while others have been recorded from Brazil, the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America, and the East Indies. The two tropical genera Dicerobatis and Ceratoptera have the cephalic fins prolonged anteriorly into a pair of horn-like appendages, which are said to be used in conveying food to the mouth. The teeth are small, flat or tubercular, and are arranged in numerous rows. In Ceratoptera they are wanting in the upper jaw. The Eagle-Rays feed principally on Molluscs, the shells of which they crush with their large grinding-teeth. Some of them attain an enormous size, and are among the largest of Fishes. Ceratoptera vampyrus of the West Indies, for example, grows to a width of 20 feet, and an embryo extracted from the oviduct of a gravid female 15 feet wide, and from 3 to 4 feet in thickness, measured 5 feet across the disc and weighed twenty pounds.[[548]] This Fish is much dreaded by the divers engaged in the pearl fisheries near Panama, whom it is said to devour after enveloping them with its vast wings.[[549]]
Fig. 266.—The Eagle-Ray, Myliobatis aquila.
The family is exclusively Tertiary, and with the exception of an extinct genus, Promyliobatis, from the Eocene of Monte Bolca, all the fossil species belong to the existing genera Myliobatis, Rhinoptera, and Aëtobatis.
Order V. Holocephali
The propriety of including the Holocephali in the sub-class Elasmobranchii is scarcely open to doubt. Like the Acanthodei they seem to represent a divergent and specialised offshoot from some primitive Elasmobranch type, and while retaining most of the essentially distinctive features of their ancestors, they have acquired, perhaps independently, certain characters distinctive of the Teleostomi, combined with others peculiar to themselves. In the few surviving genera agreement with the Elasmobranchs is to be seen in the wholly cartilaginous condition of the endoskeleton and the complete absence of cartilage- and membrane-bones. The vertebral column is acentrous and ribless, and the notochord is persistent; the dorsal arcualia include supradorsals and regularly alternating basi- and inter-dorsals. The limbs and limb-girdles are essentially Elasmobranch. Dermal denticles are present, either locally, or, as in some of the fossil types, in the form of a general investment. The brain and the reproductive organs agree more closely with the corresponding structures in the Elasmobranchs than with those of any other Fishes, and the agreement extends to the large size of the eggs and their enclosure in horny egg-cases. In both groups the nostrils are connected with the mouth by oro-nasal grooves; the hyoidean hemibranch is a true gill, and there is no air-bladder. The Holocephali also agree with the Elasmobranchs in retaining such primitive features as an intestinal spiral valve and a conus arteriosus. On the other hand, indications of specialisation in the Teleostome direction are to be noticed in the tendency to the concentration of the branchial arches towards and beneath the skull; the reduction of the interbranchial septa to the extent that they are no longer continuous with the skin, and the gill-filaments project beyond their outer margins; the presence of an operculum; the suppression of the spiracles; and the absence of a cloaca, the rectum opening externally by an anus in front of the urino-genital apertures. Among the more notable features evolved within the limits of the group mention may be made of the autostylic condition of the skull, probably an adaptive modification induced by the large size of the crushing dental plates which have taken the place of ordinary teeth; and the singular development of anterior and frontal "claspers."
The group is one of great antiquity. Apart from the isolated spines or "ichthyodorulites" common in Devonian and Carboniferous strata, some of which are probably the frontal or the fin-spines of ancient Holocephali, dental plates, closely resembling those of modern Chimaeroids and referred to the Ptychodontidae, are probably the earliest indications of the existence of the group. The Holocephali become more abundant in the Mesozoic period, but of the four families usually recognised, only one, the Chimaeridae, has survived.