''Pseudobatos buthi'', the spadenose guitarfish, is a ray in the family Rhinobatidae. Described in 2019 based on 82 museum specimens, little is known about this species in the wild. All 82 museum specimens were collected in the 1940s and 1950s and sat hidden at UCLA's fish collection and the

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the largest natural and historical museum in the western United States. Its collections include nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history. This large coll ...

until they were described by PhD student, Kelsi Rutledge. It likely is similar in ecology and behavior to its closest relative, ''

Pseudobatos productus The shovelnose guitarfish, ''Rhinobatos productus'', is a ray in the family Rhinobatidae. It becomes mature at an estimated seven to eight years old. Males are between 90 and 100 cm long, while females are around 99 cm at that age.

''. This species is found in the

Gulf of California The Gulf of California ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja Ca ...

and is a fairly small

ray Ray may refer to: Fish * Ray (fish), any cartilaginous fish of the superorder Batoidea * Ray (fish fin anatomy), a bony or horny spine on a fin Science and mathematics * Ray (geometry), half of a line proceeding from an initial point * Ray (g ...

, with an intermediate body form between that of a shark and a ray. It is

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

and found in shallow water, spending most of its time on the seafloor in sandy, muddy, coastal regions. It is different from other species due to its morphological characters, including a more narrow head and snout, as well as no spots or scales and thorns between

orbits In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as a p ...

and down its snout. This species garnered a lot of media attention due to the describer, Rutledge, who posted mock birth-announcement style photos with a preserved museum specimen, including Forbes, Spectrum1 News, Smithsonian Magazine.

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Just a freckly girl livin' in a fish world.
{{Taxonbar, from=Q85794852 buthi Fish of the Gulf of California Fish described in 2019