Kenolamna gunsoni
Kenolamna is an extinct genus of mackerel shark from the Cretaceous period known only from isolated teeth. It is named in honor of Kenneth McNamara, former curator of Paleontology at the Western Australian Museum. It is tentatively placed in the family Otodontidae, and is closest in design to Cretalamna and Paleocarcharodon though it is unclear how closely related it is to either. Currently, it is a monotypic genus containing only the species K. gunsoni.

Mikael Siversson, Johan Lindgren, Michael G. Newbrey, Peter Cederström, Todd D. Cook · CC BY 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
- KenolamnaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Lamniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Lamniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Lamniformes
Time the record covers
At most 6.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 100.5 Mya and 93.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Kenolamna gunsoni on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
6 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Kenolamna gunsoni 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.
Kenolamna gunsoni and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Kenolamna gunsoni and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
13 taxa- Cretalamna catoxodon4 sites
- Cardabiodon ricki2 sites
- Anomotodon1 site
- Archaeolamna haigi1 site
- Archaeolamna kopingensis1 site
- Carcharias1 site
- Cretoxyrhina agassizensis1 site
- Dwardius1 site
- Johnlongia allocotodon1 site
- Leptostyrax1 site
- Paranomotodon1 site
- Squalicorax curvatus1 site
- Squalicorax mutabilis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Kenolamna gunsoni, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- Cenomanian–Campanian (Late Cretaceous) mid-palaeolatitude sharks of Cretalamna appendiculata type4
- Lamniform sharks of the mid Cretaceous Alinga Formation and Beedagong Claystone, Western Australia2
Each of the 6 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 Kenolamna gunsoni
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Mikael Siversson, Johan Lindgren, Michael G. Newbrey, Peter Cederström, Todd D. Cook
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Kenolamna gunsoni 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Kenolamna”
- 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 itKenolamna through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Siverson 1996)