Copper Shark - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

Because of its very patchy range, the copper shark has been scientifically described several times from different locales. The earliest valid description is presently considered to be British zoologist Albert Günther's account of Carcharias brachyurus in the 1870 eighth volume of Catalogue of the fishes in the British Museum. The earliest name was once thought to be Auguste Duméril's 1865 Carcharias remotus, until it was found that the type specimen associated with that name is actually a blacknose shark (C. acronotus). Thus, this shark was often referred to as C. remotus in older literature. An even earlier name, Richard Owen's 1853 Galeolamna greyi, is of questionable taxonomic status as it was based solely on a set of now-destroyed jaws that may or may not have belonged to a copper shark. Modern authors have assigned this species to the genus Carcharhinus.

The specific epithet brachyurus is derived from the Greek brachys ("short") and oura ("tail"). The name "whaler" originated in the 19th century, applied by the crews of whaling vessels in the Pacific who saw large sharks of various species congregating around harpooned whale carcasses. This species may also be referred to as black-tipped whaler, cocktail shark or cocktail whaler, or New Zealand whaler, as well as by the shortened "bronze", "bronzie", or "cocktail". Günther originally referred to four syntypes: a stuffed specimen from Antarctica and another from New Zealand, which have since been lost, and two fetuses from Australia that were later discovered to be bull sharks (C. leucas). In the interests of taxonomic stability, in 1982 Jack Garrick designated a 2.4 m (7.9 ft) long female caught off Whanganui, New Zealand as a new type specimen.