Alopias latidens
Alopias latidens is an extinct species of thresher shark, that lived in the Early Miocene, known from only teeth found in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

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 17 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 15.98 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 11.63 Mya.
11 occurrences of Alopias latidens 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
11 occurrencesThese 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
7 formations
- Boom Formation2
- Jewett Formation1
- Yazoo Formation · Jackson Group1
- Rzehakia Formation1
- Calvert Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Berchem Formation1
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The named rock units Alopias latidens has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Alopias latidens and its relatives
MioceneWhere Alopias latidens and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
300 taxa- Alopias exigua5 sites
- Carcharhinus4 sites
- Carcharias acutissimus4 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis4 sites
- Dasyatis4 sites
- Carcharias cuspidatus3 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus3 sites
- Notorynchus primigenius3 sites
- Otodus megalodon3 sites
- Parotodus benedeni3 sites
- Physogaleus contortus3 sites
- Pristiophorus3 sites
- Raja3 sites
- Squalus3 sites
- Squatina3 sites
- Aetobatus2 sites
- Albula2 sites
- Araloselachus vorax2 sites
- Bothidae2 sites
- Carcharhinus egertoni2 sites
- Carcharias contortidens2 sites
- Carcharoides catticus2 sites
- Cetorhinus2 sites
- Cheloniidae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Alopias latidens, 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
9 references- Fossiles de Belgique. Dents de Requins et de Raies du Tertiare de la Belgique3
- Een vroeg-miocene fauna uit het Zand van Kiel (Formatie van Berchem) bij Post X in Berchem (Antwerpen)1
- Geology and biostratigraphy of the Potomac River Cliffs at Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia1
- Elasmobranchii and Palaeogene biostratigraphy of Trans Urals and central Asia1
- Paleoenvironment of a diverse marine vertebrate fauna from the Yazoo Clay (Late Eocene) at Copenhagen, Caldwell Parish, Louisiana1
- Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic fish faunas of Japan1
- Die Fischfauna der Innviertler Schichtengruppe und der Rzehakia Formation1
- The Enaliarctinae: A new group of extinct aquatic carnivora and a consideration of the origin of the otariidae1
- Les poissons fossiles du Bas-Congo et des régions voisines1
Each of the 11 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 latidens
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Mason Hintermeister
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Alopias latidens 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 1909