Lamna
Lamna is a genus of mackerel sharks in the family Lamnidae, containing two extant species: the porbeagle of the North Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere, and the salmon shark of the North Pacific.

NOAA · 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- Also called
- mackerel sharkPBDB
- Sits inside
- LamnidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Lamniformes
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Lamniformes
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Lamniformes
Time the record covers
At least 125 million years on record.
The record covers at least 125.77 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 143.1 Mya to 0 Mya.
110 occurrences of Lamna 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
110 occurrences- Early Cretaceous7%
- Late Cretaceous18%
- Paleocene4%
- Eocene18%
- Oligocene12%
- Miocene28%
- Pliocene7%
- Pleistocene5%
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
58 formations
- Vincentown Formation · Rancocas Group3
- Jan Juc Formation3
- Entre Rios Formation3
- London Clay Formation3
- Conway Formation3
- Umm al-Rua’us Formation2
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The named rock units Lamna has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 34 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 35 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Lamna and its relatives
MioceneWhere Lamna and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
2,462 taxa- Isurus20 sites
- Myliobatis13 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis12 sites
- Otodus megalodon10 sites
- Ostrea9 sites
- Squatina9 sites
- Striatolamia macrota9 sites
- Carcharias cuspidatus8 sites
- Carcharias taurus8 sites
- Isurus oxyrinchus8 sites
- Carcharias macrotus7 sites
- Carcharodon7 sites
- Carcharodon carcharias7 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus7 sites
- Isurus desorii7 sites
- Isurus retroflexus7 sites
- Odontaspis incurva7 sites
- Raja7 sites
- Arca6 sites
- Carcharias contortidens6 sites
- Carcharias hopei6 sites
- Cetacea6 sites
- Cretalamna appendiculata6 sites
- Odontaspis6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 95 sites for Lamna, 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
66 references- Les poissons fossiles du Bas-Congo et des régions voisines7
- Sharks' teeth and cetacean bones7
- Descriptions and Revisions of the Cretaceous and Tertiary Fish-remains of New Zealand6
- Fossil Elasmobranch teeth of South Australia and their stratigraphic distribution5
- New or little-known fossils in the National Museum, Part XXVII.-Some Cainozoic fish remains, with a revision of the group4
- Fossil fish remains from the Tertiaries of Australia4
- Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic fish faunas of Japan3
- Casier, 19663
- Fossile haifischzahne und saugetierreste von felsoestergaly, im Komitate Nograd3
- Monografia de los terrenos marinos terciarios, de las cercanias del Parana3
- A review of the Tertiary fossil Cetacea (Mammalia) localities in Australia2
- New records of Eocene sea snakes (Pterosphenus) from Louisiana.2
Each of the 110 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. 54 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 content3
Picture of Lamna
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- NOAA
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Lamna nasus · L-MEP:LN650_248.0FL_female
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Lamna”
- 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 itLamnidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cuvier 1816