SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE — In 2003, Leo Smith was dissecting a velvetfish. Smith, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Kansas, was trying to figure out the relationships between mail-cheeked fishes, an order that includes velvetfishes, as well as waspfishes, stonefishes and the infamous lionfish. As he worked his way to the velvetfish’s upper jaw, though, he realized something strange—he was having trouble removing the lachrymal bone.
“On a normal fish, there’s a little bit of connective tissue and you can work a scalpel blade between the upper jaw and this bone,” recalls Smith, whose work centers on the evolution of fish venom and bioluminescence. “I was having just a horrible time trying to separate it. When I finally got it separated, I noticed there was this thing that’s all lumpy and bumpy … it was then that it hit me that it had to be some sort of locking mechanism.”
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/meet-venomous-fish-glowing-eye-spike-180968627/
