RBH

I'm not so sure of the claim that this find is novel. The folks up at the Courtenay Museum in British Columbia seemed to know of the ratfish still being around:RBH

MonCapitan2002

That's cool. How common are these fish, though?

SEF

They're very common (some species in some places anyway). They're apparently regarded as pests by some fishermen but are fished commercially by others. Here's a more sensible site:
http://clade.acnatsci.org/dagit/

Gregg

No smoking, no drinking alcoholic beverages, plenty of roughage for regularity, a swim every morning and evening, plenty of sex, and stay the hell away from hooks, nets, and propellers!

espritch

The article River linked to didn't imply that living rat fish were unknown to science, just this particular type of rat fish.

Something that is well adapted to it's particular niche has little impetus to evolve unless that niche changes or a new niche becomes available that has not already been occupied by something well adapted to that niche. The deep ocean is one of the more stable environments on the planet. It really should be no surprise that we frequently find very old species dwelling there. The coelocanths, nautiluses, and this rat fish are all deep water species (nautiluses ascend to shallower waters at night to feed but return to deep
water during the day).

I agree. Actually, the coelocanths found off Madagascar and South Africa aren't exactly identical to the ones found in the fossil record. Most fossil coelocanths were fairly small. The live coelocanths are a rather large fish by comparison. And there is no way to tell how they may differ in non-structural ways from their ancestors. Most bacteria look identical. But they differ dramatically in terms of internal chemistry.