Physogaleus
Physogaleus is an extinct genus of small requiem shark that lived from the Late Paleocene to Miocene epochs.

Alberto Collareta, Claudio Di Celma, Giulia Bosio, Pietro Paolo Pierantoni, Elisa Malinverno, Olivier Lambert, Felix… · 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
- CarcharhinidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
Time the record covers
At least 50 million years on record.
The record covers at least 56 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 59.24 Mya to 1.8 Mya.
289 occurrences of Physogaleus on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
289 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
102 formations
- Gehannam Formation19
- Eureka Sound Formation11
- Tallahatta Formation · Claiborne Group11
- Calvert Formation · Chesapeake Group9
- Dongen Formation9
- Chucunaque Formation8
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Physogaleus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 78 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 40 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Physogaleus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Physogaleus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
3,357 taxa- Myliobatis60 sites
- Striatolamia macrota48 sites
- Dasyatis44 sites
- Rhinoptera40 sites
- Squatina prima38 sites
- Hemipristis serra34 sites
- Carcharhinus33 sites
- Carcharias31 sites
- Premontreia (Oxyscyllium) gilberti30 sites
- Brachycarcharias lerichei29 sites
- Rhizoprionodon29 sites
- Odontaspis winkleri28 sites
- Aetobatus27 sites
- Squatina26 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus25 sites
- Galeocerdo latidens25 sites
- Hypotodus verticalis25 sites
- Carcharias hopei24 sites
- Abdounia23 sites
- Abdounia beaugei23 sites
- Aetobatus irregularis23 sites
- Aetomylaeus dixoni23 sites
- Carcharias cuspidatus23 sites
- Galeorhinus23 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 228 sites for Physogaleus, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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
123 references- Shark and ray faunas in the Middle and Late Eocene of the Fayum Area, Egypt25
- Taxonomy and biostratigraphy of the elasmobranchs and bony fishes (Chondrichthyes and Osteichthyes) of the lower-to-middle Eocene (Ypresian to Bartonian) Claiborne Group in Alabama, USA, including an analysis of otoliths19
- A Sand Tiger Shark-Dominated Fauna from the Eocene Arctic Greenhouse11
- Physogaleus hemmooriensis (Carcharhinidae, Elasmobranchii) a new shark species from the Early to Middle Miocene of the North Sea basin9
- Elasmobranch teeth (Vertebrata, Pisces) from the Dongen Formation (Eocene) in The Netherlands9
- Late Miocene chondrichthyans from Lago Bayano, Panama: Functional diversity, environment and biogeography8
- Eocene Carcharhinidae and Triakidae (Elasmobranchii) of Crimea and Kazakhstan8
- Les Orectolobiformes, Carcharhiniformes et Myliobatiformes (Elasmobranchii, Neoselachii) des bassins à phosphate du Maroc (Maastrichtien-Lutétien basal). Systématique, biostratigraphie, évolution et dynamique des faunes8
- Chondrichthyan fishes from the Middle Eocene Osinovaya Formation of Rostov Region, Russia5
- Carcharocles megalodon unpublished collections from Natural History Museums around the world5
- USNM Chesapeake Group Cetacean Collection Data5
- Fossil fish remains from the Late Paleocene Tuscahoma and Early Eocene Bashi Formations of Meridian, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, Part I. Selachians5
Each of the 289 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. 111 further references are not listed. 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 Physogaleus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alberto Collareta, Claudio Di Celma, Giulia Bosio, Pietro Paolo Pierantoni, Elisa Malinverno, Olivier Lambert, Felix…
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Physogaleus 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, “Physogaleus”
- 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 itCarcharhinidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cappetta 1980