Prickly Shark - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

Austrian ichthyologist Viktor Pietschmann described the prickly shark as a new species in two separate publications: a brief German account in a 1928 volume of Anzeiger der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien and a more detailed English account in a 1930 volume of Bishop Museum Bulletin. Pietschmann named the shark in honor of C. Montague Cooke Jr., a conchologist at the Bishop Museum. However, prickly sharks were continually misidentified as bramble sharks (E. brucus) and referred to as such in scientific literature until 1960, when Jack Garrick redescribed the species. Since the original holotype from Kauai, Hawaii had been lost, Garrick designated a 2.0 m (6.6 ft) long male from Palliser Bay, New Zealand as a new type specimen. Other common names for this species include Cook's bramble shark and spinous shark.