It is being widely billed as "horrifying" and "hideous," but a more appropriate word for an ancient frilled shark recently spotted in Australian waters is "rare."

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, David Guillot, captain of a fishing boat called "Western Alliance," found the frilled shark last month. The ultra-rare shark is known to dwell at 400 meters below the surface and lower, and Guillot pulled up his specimen when fishing at depths more than a kilometer.

"I've been at sea for 30 years and I've never seen a shark look like that," he told the Fairfax Radio station Wednesday. "The head on it was like something out of a horror movie. It was quite horrific looking... It was quite scary actually."

Mark Meekan, a shark biologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told the Herald the shark does not typically swim in warm waters.

"There are usually three main spots it is found, in waters off New Zealand, near Japan and along the coast of the British Isles, down through Spain into northern Africa," he said. "However, there are some maps that show distributions that encompass the Victorian coast."

The frilled shark grows up to two meters long and has more than 300 teeth in about 47 rows. Its existence dates back 80 million years, ABC News reported, but can still turn up once in a while, earning it the nickname "the living fossil."

Simon Boag, of the South East Trawl Fishing Association, said the most jarring thing about actually beholding the frilled shark is that it looks as old as it is.

"We couldn't find a fisherman who had ever seen one before," he told ABC News. "It does look 80 million years old. It looks prehistoric, it looks like it's from another time.

"Good for dentists, but it is a freaky thing. I don't think you would want to show it to little children before they went to bed."