Carcharias
Encyclopedia
Sand sharks, or sand tigers, are lamniform shark
Shark
Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....

s of the family
Family (biology)
In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Odontaspidae (or sometimes - but incorrectly - referred to as Carcharidae). They are found on both sides of the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

 coast, but most notably in the western Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

 and in the Gulf of Maine
Gulf of Maine
The Gulf of Maine is a large gulf of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of North America.It is delineated by Cape Cod at the eastern tip of Massachusetts in the southwest and Cape Sable at the southern tip of Nova Scotia in the northeast. It includes the entire coastlines of the U.S...

. There are two extant species and maybe 21 extinct species in this genus.

Extant


Cretaceous species

    • Carcharias amonensis
    • Carcharias tenuiplicatus
    • Carcharias cf. holmdelensis Maastrichtian
      Maastrichtian
      The Maastrichtian is, in the ICS' geologic timescale, the latest age or upper stage of the Late Cretaceous epoch or Upper Cretaceous series, the Cretaceous period or system, and of the Mesozoic era or erathem. It spanned from 70.6 ± 0.6 Ma to 65.5 ± 0.3 Ma...

    • Carcharias samhammeri Late Cretaceous

Paleogene species

    • Carcharias whitei (Arambourg, 1952) - Palaeocene
    • Carcharias hopei (Agassiz, 1843) - Late Palaeocene - Eocene
    • Carcharias acutissima (Agassiz, 1844) - Late Eocene
    • Carcharias teretidens (White, 1931, - Late Palaeocene - Eocene
    • Carcharias robusta? (Leriche, 1921) - Early Eocene
    • Carcharias atlasi
    • Carcharias koerti (Stromer, 1905)
    • Carcharias vincenti (Woodward, 1899)
    • Carcharias teretidens - maybe placed into its own genus as Sylvestrilamia teretidens

Neogene

    • Carcharias acutissima (Agassiz, 1843), Oligocene - Pliocene
    • Carcharias reticulata (Probst, 1879), Oligocene - Miocene
    • Carcharias cuspidata (Agassiz, 1843), Oligocene - Miocene
    • Carcharias taurus (Rafinesque, 1810), Pleistocene
    • Carcharias taurus Rafinesque, 1810 , Pliocene - Pleistocene
    • Carcharias cuspidata (Agassiz, 1843), Pliocene - Miocene
    • Carcharias sp. - unidentified but maybe similar to the Carcharias contortidens as described by Agassiz in 1843, from the Miocene.
    • Carcharias reticulata (Kent 1994) maybe classified as Odontaspis acutissma (Agassiz 1843) from the Miocene.
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