Mishmash Fish: Mishmash fish with a genus name meaning "beautiful snout," callorhinchus milii ought to be easier on the eyes. But here's the marine elephant fish, a close kin of sharks and rays that lurks deep in the southwestern pacific Ocean. That is the big nozzle roots through sand in search f prey; like a shark's rostrum, it detects weak electric fields. Winglike fins, fused teeth, and a mate-clasping organ atop males' heads round out of the beast. The University of Cambridge's Andrew Gillis uses the fish to study the early role of genes in shaping anatomy. Evolution is efficient, he says, modifying existing forms rather then always starting anew. So the same process makes a fish's fin and a money's hand. and just a few tweaks in the timing f gene activity in the egg can turn a fish like jaws into one with an elephant's face. An adult elephant fish can grow to four feet long. It lives 600 feet beneath the sea but will migrate to shallows to lay eggs. Eight months later it will be young hatch from leathery half-foot shells.
