''Ompax spatuloides'' was a hoax fish "discovered" in Australia in August, 1872. Said to be poisonous, it could be found on some lists of Australian fishes through the 1930s. The fish was a joke perpetrated by people at

Gayndah Gayndah is a town and locality in the North Burnett Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , Gayndah had a population of 1,981 people. It is the administrative centre for the North Burnett Region. Geography Gayndah is on the Burnett River and ...

station,

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , establishe ...

, who prepared it from the body of a mullet, the tail of an

eel Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 19 families, 111 genera, and about 800 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage ...

and the head of a

platypus The platypus (''Ornithorhynchus anatinus''), sometimes referred to as the duck-billed platypus, is a semiaquatic, egg-laying mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. The platypus is the sole living representative or mono ...

or needlefish. They served it cooked for

Karl Theodor Staiger Karl Theodor Staiger (died 5 October 1888) was a German chemical analyst, naturalist and museum curator. Karl Theodor Staiger worked as a chemist for the Queensland Government 1873–80 and worked with Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay. He was secretary t ...

, the director of the

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

Museum, and he forwarded a sketch and description of the fake to expert

Francis de Laporte de Castelnau Francis may refer to: People *Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State and Bishop of Rome * Francis (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters *Francis (surname) Places * Rural ...

, who described the supposed "species" in 1879. The first publication was in the proceedings of the

Linnean Society of New South Wales The Linnean Society of New South Wales promotes ''the Cultivation and Study of the Science of Natural History in all its Branches'' and was founded in Sydney, New South Wales (Australia) in 1874 and incorporated in 1884. History The Society succe ...

, in which Count Castelnau gave his description with figures reproducing the sketches executed at the time by "a draughtsman" at Staiger's request. Doubts about the existence of the species were expressed as soon as 1881, when

William John Macleay Sir William John Macleay (13 June 1820 – 7 December 1891) was a Scottish- Australian politician, naturalist, zoologist, and herpetologist. Early life Macleay was born at Wick, Caithness, Scotland, second son of Kenneth Macleay of Keiss and ...

included it in a faunal list, but the name continued to appear throughout the twentieth century. Staiger is quoted as saying the fish was brought to him by indigenous people who had obtained it around ten miles away. The components of the specimen were said by an anonymous confessor writing to the '' Sydney Morning Herald'' in 1930 to have been sourced from the tail of an eel, a mullet's body, and the head of an

Australian lungfish The Australian lungfish (''Neoceratodus forsteri''), also known as the Queensland lungfish, Burnett salmon and barramunda, is the only surviving member of the family Neoceratodontidae. It is one of only six extant lungfish species in the world. ...

. The last animal, the Australian lungfish, was an extraordinary fish whose existence had only become known to European researchers just a few years before. The addition of a platypus bill, seemingly shown in profile in Castelnau's accompanying figure, is also reported in the letter revealing the hoax. In selecting the name of the genus, Castelnau says "In our present knowledge of this singular fish, some inconvenience might arise from giving it a significant name; and I think it is preferable to design it under the mysterious historical one of ''Ompax''."

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite news , url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article68143359 , title=A Mythical Fish. , newspaper= The Advocate , location=Burnie, Tas. , date=17 January 1934 , accessdate=19 September 2013 , page=5 , publisher=National Library of Australia {{cite journal , last1=Castelnau , first1=F. , title=On a new ganoïd fish from Queensland , journal=Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales , date=1879 , volume=3 , pages=164–165 , doi=10.5962/bhl.part.22233 , url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/part/22233 {{cite book , last1=Helfman , first1=G. , last2=Collette , first2=B.B. , last3=Facey , first3=D.E. , last4=Bowen , first4=B.W. , title=The Diversity of Fishes: Biology, Evolution, and Ecology , date=2009 , publisher=John Wiley & Sons , isbn=9781444311907 , page=294 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FyehAR6hsUUC&pg=PA249 , language=en {{cite journal , last1=Macleay , first1=W. , title=Descriptive catalogue of the fishes of Australia. Part IV , journal=Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales , date=1881 , volume=6 , pages=202–387 , doi=10.5962/bhl.part.11870 , url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/part/11870, doi-access=free {{cite book , last1=Saunders , first1=B. , title=Discovery of Australia's Fishes: A History of Australian Ichthyology to 1930 , date=2012 , publisher=Csiro Publishing , isbn=9780643106727 , page=126 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A-JCByVyQH0C&pg=PA126 , language=en

External links

* ''Australian Sporting Records'' (1998): 117. Bantam Books. * Whitley, Gilbert P. (1933): ''Ompax spatuloides'' Castelnau, a mythical Australian fish. '' Am. Nat.'' 67(713): 563–567

Fictional fish Hoaxes in science Hoaxes in Australia 1872 in Australia 19th-century hoaxes