Hypogaleus hyugaensis
The blacktip tope, also known as pencil shark or blacktip topeshark, is a houndshark of the family Triakidae, and the only member of the genus Hypogaleus. It is found in the deep waters of the continental shelf in the Indo-West Pacific, from East Africa to Japan, at depths between 40 and 230 m. It can grow up to a length of 1.27 m.

CSIRO National Fish Collection · 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- Also called
- blacktip topePBDB
- Sits inside
- HypogaleusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Carcharhiniformes
Time the record covers
At most 763 thousand years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 774 ka and 11.7 ka, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Hypogaleus hyugaensis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
1 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Hypogaleus hyugaensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Hypogaleus hyugaensis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Hypogaleus hyugaensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
55 taxa- Abyssicola macrochir1 site
- Amblychaeturichthys hexanema1 site
- Amblychaeturichthys sciistius1 site
- Ammodytes1 site
- Apogonidae1 site
- Benthosema suborbitale1 site
- Cepola1 site
- Ceratoscopelus1 site
- Clupea pallasii1 site
- Conger1 site
- Crossorhombus kanekonis1 site
- Diaphus1 site
- Diaphus (Lamprossa) watasei1 site
- Diaphus luetkeni1 site
- Diogenichthys1 site
- Electrona risso1 site
- Englauris japonica1 site
- Gadus chalcogrammus1 site
- Glossanodon1 site
- Gnathophis1 site
- Gobiiformes1 site
- Guttigadus nana1 site
- Gymnogobius1 site
- Hoplostethus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Hypogaleus hyugaensis, 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 Hypogaleus hyugaensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- CSIRO National Fish Collection
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Hypogaleus hyugaensis was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access 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 itHypogaleus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Miyosi 1939)