School shark
species of shark (Galeorhinus galeus)
The school shark (Galeorhinus galeus) is a houndshark of the family Triakidae, and the only living member of the genus Galeorhinus. Common names also include tope, tope shark, snapper shark, and soupfin shark. It is found worldwide in temperate seas at depths down to about 800 m (2,600 ft). It can grow to nearly 2 m (6 ft 7 in) long. It feeds both in midwater and near the seabed, and its reproduction is ovoviviparous. This shark is caught in fisheries for its flesh, its fins, and its liver, which has a very high vitamin A content. The IUCN has classified this species as critically endangered in its Red List of Threatened Species.
Taxonomy
The school shark is the only extant member of Galeorhinus, an ancient genus that dates to at least the Early Eocene, when the very similar species G. cuvieri is known, and likely as far back as the mid-Cretaceous.
Fossil teeth of the modern school shark date as far back as the mid-late Eocene, where they are known from the Castle Hayne Formation of North Carolina, US. Teeth of this species are also known from the Miocene of North Carolina, Panama and Chile (Bahia Inglesa Formation), and the Pliocene of Chile (Bahia Inglesa and Valparaíso), South Australia, and California, US.
Description
The school shark is a small, shallow-bodied shark with an elongated snout. The large mouth is crescent-shaped and the teeth are of a similar size and shape in both jaws.
“School shark” enters the record as species of shark (Galeorhinus galeus). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what School, shark and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “School shark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.