Chaenogaleus
Chaenogaleus is a genus of shark containing two species. Only one is extant.Hooktooth shark (Bleeker, 1852) †Chaenogaleus affinis (Probst, 1879)

Sir Francis Day · Public Domain · via Wikidata/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
- HemigaleidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
Time the record covers
At least 42 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 3.6 Mya.
35 occurrences of Chaenogaleus 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
35 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
14 formations
- Florianer Schichten Formation2
- Hrušky Formation2
- Tuscahoma Formation1
- Pungo River Formation1
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group1
- Trent Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Chaenogaleus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 19 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Chaenogaleus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Chaenogaleus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
944 taxa- Carcharhinus priscus25 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis23 sites
- Hemipristis serra23 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus20 sites
- Squalus19 sites
- Squatina subserrata19 sites
- Notorynchus primigenius18 sites
- Carcharhinus acuarius17 sites
- Otodus megalodon17 sites
- Carcharias acutissima15 sites
- Dasyatis15 sites
- Myliobatis14 sites
- Carcharias cuspidatus13 sites
- Pristiophorus suevicus13 sites
- Dasyatis rugosa12 sites
- Pachyscyllium dachiardi12 sites
- Paragaleus pulchellus12 sites
- Sphyrna zygaena12 sites
- Rhynchobatus pristinus11 sites
- Aetobatus arcuatus10 sites
- Centrophorus granulosus10 sites
- Megascyliorhinus miocaenicus10 sites
- Sphyrna10 sites
- Carcharhinus9 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 34 sites for Chaenogaleus, 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
19 references- Les chondrichthyens du Miocène moyen (Serravallien) de Salles (Gironde, France)7
- Inventaire des Élasmobranches (requins, raies, chimères) des dépôts molassiques du Sud-Luberon (Miocène supérieur)6
- Elasmobranchier (Pisces, Chondrichthyes) aus dem Badenium (Mittleres Miozän) des Steirischen Beckens (Österreich)3
- Fish teeth from the Middle Miocene of Kienberg at Mikulov, Czech Republic, Vienna Basin2
- Les vertébrés du Miocène moyen de Contres (Loir-et-Cher, France)2
- The Neogene sharks, rays, and bony fishes from Lee Creek Mine, Aurora, North Carolina2
- A new chondrichthyan (Sharks and Rays) Fossil Assemblage from the Miocene Cacela Fm. at Albufeira (Algarve, Portugal) with two new species: Palaeoecology and Biogeography1
- The shark and ray teeth of the Lower Miocene (Upper Marine Molasse) from Ballendorf, Baden-Württemberg, Southern Germany1
- Les poissons cartilagineux (chondrichtyens) du Serravallien de la vallée de l'Eyre (Gironde, France) (1/2)1
- Sharks, rays and skates (Chondrichthyes, Elasmobranchii) from the Upper Marine Molasse (middle Burdigalian, early Miocene) of the Simssee area (Bavaria, Germany), with comments on palaeogeographic and ecological patterns1
- Een vroeg-miocene fauna uit het Zand van Kiel (Formatie van Berchem) bij Post X in Berchem (Antwerpen)1
- Eine Elasmobranchierfauna (Elasmobranchii, Neoselachii) aus der Oberen Meeresmolasse (Ottnangium, Unteres Miozän) des Heigelsberger Grabens bei Teisendorf, Oberbayern1
Each of the 35 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. 7 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 Chaenogaleus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Sir Francis Day
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Chaenogaleus 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 itHemigaleidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gill 1861