The arrowtooth grenadier (''Ventrifossa atherodon'') is a species of

rattail Grenadiers or rattails are generally large, brown to black gadiform marine fish of the subfamily Macrourinae, the largest subfamily of the family Macrouridae. Found at great depths from the Arctic to Antarctic, members of this subfamily are am ...

. This is a deep-water fish found at depths of up to 950 m. It was originally recorded from the waters around

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

but has recently also been recorded near

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

, which suggests it has a far wider distribution than previously thought. This species reaches a length of 31 cm. As suggested by the common name, it has distinctive dentition, the outer row of

premaxilla The premaxilla (or praemaxilla) is one of a pair of small cranial bones at the very tip of the upper jaw of many animals, usually, but not always, bearing teeth. In humans, they are fused with the maxilla. The "premaxilla" of therian mammal has b ...

ry teeth enlarged and recurved with arrow-shaped points. It can also be distinguished by a distinctive black pattern on the head and a uniformly dark first

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through conv ...

References

Macrouridae Fish described in 1897 Taxa named by Charles Henry Gilbert {{Gadiformes-stub