Carcharhinus amboinensis
The pigeye shark or Java shark is an uncommon species of requiem shark, in the family Carcharhinidae, found in the warm coastal waters of the eastern Atlantic and western Indo-Pacific. It prefers shallow, murky environments with soft bottoms, and tends to roam within a fairly localized area. With its bulky grey body, small eyes, and short, blunt snout, the pigeye shark looks almost identical to the better-known bull shark. The two species differ in vertebral count, the relative sizes of the dorsal fins, and other subtle traits. This shark typically reaches lengths of 1.9–2.5 m (6.2–8.2 ft).

The Great Mule of Eupatoria · CC0 · 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- Also called
- pigeye sharkPBDB
- Sits inside
- CarcharhinusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
Time the record covers
At least 5.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 7.246 Mya to 1.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 774 ka.
6 occurrences of Carcharhinus amboinensis on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
6 occurrences- Miocene83%
- Pleistocene17%
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
3 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Carcharhinus amboinensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Carcharhinus amboinensis and its relatives
MioceneWhere Carcharhinus amboinensis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
104 taxa- Carcharhinus brachyurus4 sites
- Hemipristis serra4 sites
- Aetobatus3 sites
- Carcharhiniformes3 sites
- Sphyrna mokarran3 sites
- Apogonidae2 sites
- Ariidae2 sites
- Ariosoma2 sites
- Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos2 sites
- Carcharhinus sorrah2 sites
- Dasyatidae2 sites
- Galeocerdo cuvier2 sites
- Gobiidae2 sites
- Larimichthys2 sites
- Myliobatiformes2 sites
- Myliobatis2 sites
- Nibea2 sites
- Otodus megalodon2 sites
- Pomadasys2 sites
- Sillago2 sites
- Acropoma1 site
- Advenasciaena bruneiana1 site
- Aetomylaeus1 site
- Albula1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Carcharhinus amboinensis, 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
3 references- First report on a diverse Neogene cartilaginous fish fauna from Borneo (Ambug Hill, Brunei Darussalam)4
- A new chondrichthyan (Sharks and Rays) Fossil Assemblage from the Miocene Cacela Fm. at Albufeira (Algarve, Portugal) with two new species: Palaeoecology and Biogeography1
- A previously overlooked, highly diverse early Pleistocene elasmobranch assemblage from southern Taiwan1
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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Carcharhinus amboinensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- The Great Mule of Eupatoria
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Carcharhinus amboinensis 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 itCarcharhinus through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Muller and Henle 1839)