Estuary Stingray - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The first reference to the estuary stingray in scientific literature was probably a record by 19th-century English naturalist William Saville-Kent of a "Trygon pastinaca" feeding on oysters in a Queensland estuary. This species was formally described by Australian ichthyologist James Douglas Ogilby in a 1908 volume of Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, based on a specimen collected from the Brisbane River. The specific epithet fluviorum means "of the rivers" in Latin.