Galeocerdo cuvier (Péron & Lesueur in Lesueur, 1822)

White, William T. & Ko’Ou, Alfred, 2018, An annotated checklist of the chondrichthyans of Papua New Guinea, Zootaxa 4411 (1), pp. 1-82 : 42

Galeocerdo cuvier (Péron & Lesueur in Lesueur, 1822)

Tiger Shark

Squalus cuvier Péron & Lesueur in Lesueur, 1822: 351 . No types known. Type locality: northwestern Australia .

Local synonymy: Galeocerdo cuvieri— Munro, 1958: 113 (Dyke Ackland Bay). Galeocerda cuvieri— Munro, 1967: 9, pl. 1, fig. 8 (New Guinea). Galeocerdo cuvier— Filewood, 1973: 4 (PNG); Allen et al., 2003: 112 (Milne Bay); Hamilton et al., 2009: 73 (northern Bismarck Archipelago); White et al., 2018: 182, figs (PNG).

PNG voucher material: (4 spec.) KFRS E.014 (dried jaws), ~ 1830 mm TL, near Idia Island , 15 mile west of Port Moresby, 3 Dec. 1963 ; KFRS E.055 (dried jaws), Ramu River mouth, 19 Jul. 1965 ; KFRS E.379 (dried jaws), ~ 2430 mm TL, north end of Yule Island , Central Province, 8 Nov. 1969 ; KFRS E.775 (dried jaws), no label, new registration number allocated Apr. 2017 (possibly = E.480, Tatana , Port Moresby, 12 Sep. 1975, which cannot be located).

Remarks: First recorded from PNG by Munro (1958) from Dyke Ackland Bay in Oro Province. Caught by longline fisheries and coastal fisheries in PNG. Previously placed in the family Carcharhinidae but differs in a number of key characteristics from other members of that family (including very long upper labial furrows reaching to level of eye, strong keels on caudal peduncle, an obvious spiracle, and embryonic connection not via a placental connection) and also differs at a molecular level (Naylor et al., unpubl. data).