Carcharomodus escheri
Carcharomodus is an extinct dubious genus of lamnid shark. Its only species is Carcharomodus escheri, The actual valid name of C. escheri is Isurus subserratus (escheri). Commonly nicknamed the serrated mako shark or Escher's mako shark. It was once interpreted as a transitional form between the broad-toothed ‘mako’ Carcharodon hastalis and the modern great white shark, but is now regarded as a distinct evolutionary lineage rather than a direct ancestor, particularly following the discovery of Carcharodon hubbelli, which clarified the great white shark’s evolutionary history.

Agassiz (1843) · Public Domain · 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
- CarcharomodusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Lamniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Lamniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Lamniformes
Time the record covers
At least 6.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 11.63 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 13.82 Mya to 3.6 Mya.
11 occurrences of Carcharomodus escheri on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
11 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
7 formations
- Gram Formation2
- Breda Formation2
- Grange Burn Formation1
- Arenas de Huelva Formation1
- Choptank Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Gram Formation1
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The named rock units Carcharomodus escheri has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Carcharomodus escheri and its relatives
MioceneWhere Carcharomodus escheri and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
205 taxa- Carcharodon hastalis6 sites
- Notorynchus primigenius6 sites
- Otodus megalodon6 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus5 sites
- Raja4 sites
- Carcharhinus priscus3 sites
- Carcharias acutissima3 sites
- Carcharias cuspidatus3 sites
- Dasyatis3 sites
- Isurus oxyrinchus3 sites
- Isurus retroflexus3 sites
- Mustelus3 sites
- Myliobatis3 sites
- Acipenser2 sites
- Aetobatus2 sites
- Alopias exigua2 sites
- Araloselachus vorax2 sites
- Astarte2 sites
- Carcharhinus2 sites
- Carcharhinus acuarius2 sites
- Cetorhinus maximus2 sites
- Chaenogaleus affinis2 sites
- Hemipristis serra2 sites
- Megascyliorhinus miocaenicus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Carcharomodus escheri, 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
10 references- Les chondrichthyens du Miocène moyen (Serravallien) de Salles (Gironde, France)2
- Geology and biostratigraphy of the Potomac River Cliffs at Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia1
- A partial skeleton of a new lamniform mackerel shark from the Miocene of Europe1
- A partial rostrum of the porbeagle shark Lamna nasus (Lamniformes, Lamnidae) from the Miocene of the North Sea Basin and the taxonomic importance of rostral morphology in extinct sharks1
- Los tiburones Lamniformes (Chondrichthyes, Galeomorphii) del Plioceno inferior de la Formación Arenas de Huelva, suroeste de la cuenca del Guadalquivir, España1
- A review of the Tertiary fossil Cetacea (Mammalia) localities in Australia1
- On the fossil teeth of the lamnoid sharks from the Shigarami Formation (Neogene) in the north part of Nagano Prefecture, central Japan1
- Carcharodon megalodon from the Upper Miocene of Denmark, with comments on elasmobranch tooth enameloid: coronoi'n1
- Mesocetus argillarius sp.n. (Cetacea, Mysticeti) from Upper Miocene of Denmark, with remarks on the lower jaw and echolocation system in whale phylogeny1
- Lithostratigraphical and biostratigraphical subdivision of Tertiary deposits (Oligocene-Pliocene) in the Winterswijk-Almelo region (eastern part of the Netherlands)1
Each of the 11 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. 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 Carcharomodus escheri
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Agassiz (1843)
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Carcharomodus escheri was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource was 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 itCarcharomodus through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Agassiz 1843)