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Pallid Sturgeon

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published May 30, 2016 at 9:00 AM EDT

For a very long time, 70 million years or so, a strange sort of fish has been swimming along the sandy bottoms of North America's largest rivers. They have neither bones nor scales. Instead they have a cartilaginous skeleton and rows of bony scutes for protection. An elongated snout, asymmetrical, scimitar-shaped tail, and whisker-like barbels add to their bizarre appearance and reputation as living fossils.

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Kelby Ouchley

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.

See stories by Kelby Ouchley