Brachaelurus

Brachaelurus is the sole genus of sharks in the family Brachaeluridae in the order Orectolobiformes. Only two extant species of blind sharks occur, both of which are native to shallow coastal waters up to 110 m (360 ft) deep, off the eastern coast of Australia.

Brachaelurus

David Breneman at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
BrachaeluridaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Orectolobiformes
Life habit
nektobenthicPBDB, for Orectolobiformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Orectolobiformes

Time the record covers

At least 94 million years on record.

The record covers at least 132.6 Mya to 37.71 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 137.05 Mya to 33.9 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 12 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 8 of 12 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 2 of 12 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 1 of 12 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 12 occurrences139–136 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences136–132 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences85–82 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences82–78 Mya — about 2 occurrences78–75 Mya — about 2 occurrences75–71 Mya — about 2 occurrences71–68 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences68–64 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences60–57 Mya — about 1 occurrence57–53 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences39–35 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences35–32 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences132.6 Mya37.71 Mya139 Mya32 Mya

12 occurrences of Brachaelurus on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

12 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

5 formations

Mesaverde — 44.08°N, 107.73°WMesaverde — 44.10°N, 107.75°WMesaverde — 44.17°N, 107.81°WNavesink — 40.33°N, 74.18°WTuffeau de St-Omer — 50.53°N, 3.15°ENew Egypt — 40.09°N, 74.55°WWadi Esh-Shallala — 31.57°N, 37.12°E

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The named rock units Brachaelurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Brachaelurus and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Brachaelurus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

163 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Brachaelurus, 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

6 references

Each of the 12 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 Brachaelurus

Credit
David Breneman at English Wikipedia
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Brachaelurus 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 itBrachaeluridae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ogilby 1906