Carchariidae
Carchariidae is a family of lamniform sharks containing a single extant genus, Carcharias,

Amada44 · CC BY 3.0 · 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
- LamniformesPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Lamniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Lamniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Lamniformes
Time the record covers
At least 121 million years on record.
The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 125.77 Mya to 0 Mya.
902 occurrences of Carchariidae on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
902 occurrences- Early Cretaceousunder 1%
- Late Cretaceous26%
- Paleocene7%
- Eocene24%
- Oligocene8%
- Miocene28%
- Pliocene5%
- Pleistocene2%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
265 formations
- London Clay Formation34
- Fox Hills Formation · Montana Group34
- Mesaverde Formation20
- Selsey Formation · Bracklesham Group14
- Navesink Formation · Monmouth Group14
- Aquia Formation · Pamunkey Group12
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The named rock units Carchariidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 241 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 237 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Carchariidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Carchariidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
3,695 taxa- Carcharias57 sites
- Carcharias cuspidatus51 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis42 sites
- Otodus megalodon41 sites
- Myliobatis38 sites
- Carcharias macrotus34 sites
- Carcharhinus31 sites
- Carcharias acutissimus31 sites
- Hemipristis serra30 sites
- Squalicorax kaupi29 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus28 sites
- Ischyrhiza mira28 sites
- Carcharias taurus27 sites
- Teleostei27 sites
- Archaeolamna kopingensis25 sites
- Squatina24 sites
- Rhinobatos23 sites
- Squalicorax pristodontus23 sites
- Cretalamna appendiculata21 sites
- Dasyatis21 sites
- Scyliorhinus21 sites
- Isurus20 sites
- Odontaspis aculeatus19 sites
- Scapanorhynchus texanus19 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 643 sites for Carchariidae, and this reads 240 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
340 references- Chondrichthyan and osteichthyan paleofaunas from the Cretaceous (Late Maastrichtian) Fox Hills Formation of North Dakota, USA: paleoecology, paleogeography, and extinction33
- Casier, 196632
- Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Euselachii) from the Late Cretaceous of France and the UK22
- Fossil Elasmobranch teeth of South Australia and their stratigraphic distribution22
- A new selachian fauna from the late Campanian of Wyoming (Teapot Sandstone Member, Mesaverde Formation, Big Horn Basin)20
- The Selsey Division (Bracklesham Group) at Lee-on-the-Solent, Gosport, (Hants)18
- Contribution a l'etude des faunes ichthyologiques marines des terrains tertiaires de la plaine cotiere Atlantique et du centre des Etats-Unis17
- Biology, dental morphology and taxonomy of lamniform sharks from the Campanian of the Kristianstad Basin, Sweden16
- Contribution a l'étude des sélaciens du Groupe Monmouth (Campanien-Maestrichtian) du New Jersey14
- Shark and ray faunas in the Middle and Late Eocene of the Fayum Area, Egypt13
- Faunal Horizons of the Barton Beds in Hampshire13
- A review of the Tertiary fossil Cetacea (Mammalia) localities in Australia12
Each of the 902 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. 328 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 Carchariidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Amada44
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Carchariidae 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 itLamniformes through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Muller and Henle)