Due to popular demand and a limited run the authors of the Cephalopod Beak Guide for the Southern Ocean have their book freely available for download on the internet! The guide is published by the British Antarctic Survey and is available is 10mb low-res download and well as a 55mb hi-res download.
As the only defining character left after digestion, the squid beak is important in determining the type of squid that eaten. As Paul Rodhouse wrote in the preface:
“This new guide will be an essential identification tool for ecologists working on the diets of higher predators. Nevertheless it is clear that there are still cephalopod beaks being found in predator diets that belong to species that are unknown to science.”
As a fun game the first person to download the book and identify this lower cephalopod beak will win the love and adoration of Deep Sea News and have their name (or pseudonym) displayed on our frontpage for all the world to see how awesome they are and get Mad Taxonomic Skillz bragging rights!
Rules:
1) Download the Cephalopod Beak Guide
2) Bask in its glory
3) Identify the squid beak below (hint: it is the lower beak)
4) Post a comment with the answer and include your name/pseudonym (how you would like to be acknowledged) and a valid email address
5) Get adoration and see name on top of website until next contest
5) You better get to it fast because there are lots of DSN readers with Mad Taxonomic Skillz!
If I am correct in my hasty identifications, looks like Mastigoteuthis psychrophila.
that would be page 67.
I second that ID: Mastigoteuthis psychrophila! What a neat resource.
Man, I was way lagging on this one. Gotta check DSN more frequently. I’m still stuck on Step 2 . . . *bask*