Atlantic Sawtail Catshark - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The original description of the Atlantic sawtail catshark, as Pristiurus atlanticus, was published in 1888 by French naturalist Léon Louis Vaillant, in Expéditions scientifiques du "Travailleur" et du "Talisman" pendant les années 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883. Vaillant based his account on a specimen caught at a depth of 540 m (1,770 ft) off Cape Spartel in northwestern Morocco. This species was long thought to be the same as the closely similar blackmouth catshark (G. melastomus), until it was resurrected by Ramón Muñoz-Chápuli and A. Perez Ortega in 1985. Castilho and colleagues (2007) further affirmed the distinction between G. atlanticus and G. melastomus using morphometric and mitochondrial DNA data.