spadenose shark
scoliodon laticaudus latin

Abundant in many areas, spadenose sharks often form large schools.

Female spadenose sharks probably mate at least once per year, and breeding takes place year-round.

Despite its commercial importance, overall fishery statistics for the spadenose shark are lacking.

The spadenose shark is harmless to humans.

It was once regarded as conspecific to the spadenose shark (S. laticaudus)

The spadenose shark is also caught as bycatch, particularly in gillnet fisheries off Kalimantan.

A small, stocky species, the spadenose shark has a broad head with a distinctive highly flattened, trowel-shaped snout.

Scoliodon laticaudus (Spadenose shark)

Scoliodon macrorhynchos (Pacific spadenose shark)

The spadenose shark (Scoliodon laticaudus) is a species of requiem shark, family Carcharhinidae.

The spadenose shark is harmless to humans and is valued by artisanal and commercial fishers for its meat and fins.

It was formerly thought to include only a single Indo-Pacific species, the spadenose shark (S. laticaudus, but recent taxonomic research has found that there are three, and that former junior synonyms need to be resurrected.

Phylogenetic analyses based on morphological and molecular data indicate the spadenose shark is one of the most basal members of its family, along with the related genus Rhizoprionodon and Galeocerdo, the tiger shark.

The spadenose shark has the most advanced form of placental viviparity known in fish, as measured by the complexity of the placental connection and the difference in weight between the egg and the newborn young.

The first scientific description of the spadenose shark was published in 1838 by the German biologists Johannes Peter Müller and Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle, in their Systematische Beschreibung der Plagiostomen.

The spadenose shark is found in the western Indo-Pacific from Tanzania to South and Southeast Asia, as far east as Java and Borneo and as far north as Taiwan and Japan.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed this species as Near Threatened; the spadenose shark's relatively short reproductive cycle may render it more resilient to fishing pressure than other sharks, though its low fecundity still merits caution.

Scoliodon laticaudus (Spadenose shark)

The spadenose shark (Scoliodon laticaudus) is a species of requiem shark, family Carcharhinidae.