Long time no post, I know.  The main reason for that has been the sheer amount of field work I’ve found myself involved with this semester, all of which somehow came to a head in the past month.  On the bright side, now that I’m coming out of the other side of it, expect some nifty field work posts in the next week or so (and you have been reading my posts on Southern Fried Science, right?).

All that said, during one of my field excursions a particularly large spiny dogfish coughed up something during capture that I frankly have never seen before and haven’t been able to find in any ID books.  It is pretty well-digested, but intact enough that it looks like some kind of fish.  It’s about 10 cm long, and the dogfish that ate it was caught in the vicinity of Atlantic Beach, North Carolina.  Check out the image below the jump, any help you can provide with ID would be appreciated.

Seriously, what the hell is this thing?

When providing ID help, please be sure to note the date of this post.