The Oblong or Truncate-tailed Ocean Sunfish, Ranzania truncata, at Mauritius

Abstract

IN studying the history and distribution in the three great oceans of the very rare pointed-tailed sunfish Masturus, I have had to disentangle it in the literature from the other two genera of the family Molidæ—Mola, the round-tailed genus, and Ranzania, the truncate form. The former, known since Roman times, is found in the three central oceans, but to my surprise, Ranzania, while recorded from the Atlantic and Pacific, has seemingly never been described from the Indian Ocean. However, there is known to me an unpublished figure and description of it in this ocean and it seems well to put these on record.