Bluegrey Carpetshark - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The bluegrey carpetshark was described by Australian ichthyologist James Douglas Ogilby as a species of Brachaelurus, in an 1908 issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland. He named the shark after his friend John Colclough, and based his account on two immature males about 46 cm (18 in) long from Moreton Bay in Queensland, one of which was later "accidentally destroyed". A year after Ogilby's publication, Charles Tate Regan created the new genus Heteroscyllium for this species.

In 1940, Gilbert Percy Whitley published the first illustrations of the bluegrey carpetshark, but unfortunately they were inaccurate in some respects, particularly on omitting a midline groove on the chin. Much taxonomic confusion then resulted, on whether the bluegrey carpetshark and the blind shark belonged to separate genera or even constituted separate species, that were not resolved until the Queensland Museum obtained new specimens for study. Other common names for this species include blue-grey catshark, bluegrey shark, and southern blind shark.