Alopias grandis

"Alopias" grandis is a species of giant thresher shark from the Miocene. Estimates calculated from teeth comparisons suggest the living animal was comparable in size to the extant great white shark. More recent studies replaced A. grandis into genus Trigonotodus.

Alopias grandis

Mason Hintermeister · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
AlopiasPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Lamniformes
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Lamniformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Lamniformes

Time the record covers

At least 28 million years on record.

The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 2.58 Mya.

Eocene — about 1 of 5 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 5 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 5 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 2 of 5 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 5 occurrences38–37 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences37–36 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences35–34 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences14–13 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences13–12 Mya — about 1 occurrence5.5–4.3 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences4.3–3.1 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences3.1–1.9 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences33.9 Mya5.333 Mya38.4 Mya1.9 Mya

5 occurrences of Alopias grandis on record, most of them in the Miocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

5 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

4 formations

Yorktown — 33.79°N, 77.65°WYorktown — 33.58°N, 77.42°WCalvert — 38.17°N, 76.81°WCoosawatchie — 33.10°N, 80.40°WJoe's River — 13.22°N, 59.55°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Alopias grandis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Alopias grandis and its relatives

Miocene

Where Alopias grandis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

69 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Alopias grandis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

3 references

Each of the 5 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Alopias grandis

Credit
Mason Hintermeister
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Alopias grandis was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAlopias through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Leriche 1942)