Pseudocorax
Pseudocorax is an extinct genus of mackerel sharks that lived during the Late Cretaceous. It contains six valid species that have been found in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and North America. It was formerly assigned to the family Anacoracidae, but is now placed in its own family Pseudocoracidae along with Galeocorax. The former species "P." australis and "P." primulus have been reidentified as species of Echinorhinus and Squalicorax, respectively.

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
- PseudocoracidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Lamniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Lamniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Lamniformes
Time the record covers
At least 65 million years on record.
The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 48.07 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 37.71 Mya.
81 occurrences of Pseudocorax 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
81 occurrences- Early Cretaceous4%
- Late Cretaceous93%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
- Eocene2%
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
30 formations
- Newhaven Chalk Formation5
- Marshalltown Formation · Matawan Group4
- Niobrara Formation4
- Rybushka Formation3
- Maastricht Formation3
- Mishash Formation2
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The named rock units Pseudocorax has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 32 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pseudocorax and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Pseudocorax and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
595 taxa- Squalicorax kaupi36 sites
- Squatina (Cretascyllium) hassei26 sites
- Squalicorax pristodontus22 sites
- Cretalamna appendiculata21 sites
- Archaeolamna kopingensis17 sites
- Rhinobatos15 sites
- Carcharias adneti14 sites
- Ischyrhiza mira13 sites
- Scyliorhinus elongatus12 sites
- Anomotodon hermani11 sites
- Crassescyliorhinus germanicus11 sites
- Heterodontus11 sites
- Scapanorhynchus texanus11 sites
- Squatirhina lonzeensis11 sites
- Chiloscyllium frequens10 sites
- Nanocorax microserratodon10 sites
- Protolamna borodini10 sites
- Scapanorhynchus raphiodon10 sites
- Carcharias samhammeri9 sites
- Cretaplatyrhinoidis ornatus9 sites
- Enchodus9 sites
- Eoptolamna supracretacea9 sites
- Hybodus9 sites
- Plicatoscyllium globidens9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 81 sites for Pseudocorax, 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
41 references- Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Euselachii) from the Late Cretaceous of France and the UK14
- Les sélaciens des terrains néocrétacés and paléocènes de Belgique and des contrées limitrophes. Eléments d'une biostratigraphie intercontinentale8
- The Late Cretaceous anacoracid shark, Pseudocorax laevis (Leriche), from the Niobrara Chalk of western Kansas4
- Senonian elasmobranch teeth from Israel. Biostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental implications4
- Les sélaciens du Campanien-Maastrichtien de Tercis-les-Bains (SO France)3
- Lower Cretaceous Anacoracidae? (Lamniformes: Neoselachii); vertebrae and associated dermal scales from Australia3
- Late Cretaceous and Danian neoselachians from southern Sweden3
- A guide to fossil sharks, skates, and rays from the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal area, Delaware3
- Pseudocorax (Chondrichthyes, Lamniformes, Pseudocoracidae) in the Upper Maastrichtian phosphates of Khouribga Province, Morocco2
- Ecological impact of the end-Cretaceous extinction on lamniform sharks2
- Crossing the boundary: an elasmobranch fauna from Stevns Klint, Denmark2
- Selachians from the type Campanian area (Late Cretaceous), Charentes, western France2
Each of the 81 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. 29 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 Pseudocorax
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Mason Hintermeister
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Pseudocorax”
- 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 itPseudocoracidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Priem 1897