Nearly seven years ago, scientists from Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center sampling sharks caught on charter boats off Fort Lauderdale and South Carolina stumbled on a startling discovery: some of the sharks that looked like scalloped hammerheads were actually a different, unidentified species.

At first, the new species appeared to be just a local oddity. But then it turned up in waters off South Carolina and, later, thousands of miles away off the coast of southern Brazil.

The possible new species was referred to simply as a cryptic species until it receives an official designation. This is prolonged, in part, because the discovery is really that the "scalloped hammerhead" is possibly two different species, not that a new species has been sighted, in the normal way.

The misidentification of the new species raises even more concerns about hammerhead populations.

The scalloped hammerhead is on the red list of endangered species under the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. It also is under review by NOAA Fisheries Service to determine whether it should be listed as a threatened or endangered species. The unnamed species is on neither list. But that could change.

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