Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Plural form of
flatfish .
Etymologies
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Examples
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CT scans of 50-million-year-old fossils have revealed an intermediate species between primitive flatfishes with eyes on both sides of their heads and the modern, lopsided versions, which include sole, flounder, and halibut.
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The discovery of a missing link in the evolution of bizarre flatfishes—each of which has both eyes on the same side of its head—could give intelligent design advocates a sinking feeling.
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The discovery of a missing link in the evolution of bizarre flatfishes—each of which has both eyes on the same side of its head—could give intelligent design advocates a sinking feeling.
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CT scans of 50-million-year-old fossils have revealed an intermediate species between primitive flatfishes with eyes on both sides of their heads and the modern, lopsided versions, which include sole, flounder, and halibut.
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Some of the more abundant fish species that would be very likely to move northward under the projected warming include Atlantic and Pacific herring and cod, walleye pollock in the Bering Sea, and some of the flatfishes that might presently be limited by bottom temperatures in the northern areas of the marginal arctic seas.
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A similar pattern has been seen on Georges Bank, where the decline of cod through the 1960s was accompanied by a steep rise in flatfishes.
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Other bottom feeders occur in less numbers, the pollock and the cusk perhaps being next in order of importance, with hake and a considerable amount of the various flatfishes in the otter trawls.
Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine Walter H. Rich
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You see how truly your prediction regarding the flatness of the creature's head is substantiated by these casts; it is really not easy to know how, placed on so flat a surface, the eyes could have been very available save for star-gazing; but as nature makes no mistakes in such matters, it is possible that the creature, like the flatfishes, may have lived much at the bottom, and that most of the seeing it had use for may have been seeing in an upward direction.
Louis Agassiz His Life and Correspondence Agassiz, Louis 1885
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You see how truly your prediction regarding the flatness of the creature's head is substantiated by these casts; it is really not easy to know how, placed on so flat a surface, the eyes could have been very available save for star-gazing; but as nature makes no mistakes in such matters, it is possible that the creature, like the flatfishes, may have lived much at the bottom, and that most of the seeing it had use for may have been seeing in an upward direction.
Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence Louis Agassiz 1840
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"These octopuses can change their color pattern to look similar to - but not exactly like - numerous toxic and non-toxic flatfishes in their area.
Science Blog 2010
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