Description
The largetooth cookiecutter shark has a long, cigar-shaped body with an extremely short, blunt head and snout. The large, oval eyes are positioned to allow binocular vision, and are followed by wide, angled spiracles. The nostrils are small, each with a low, pointed skin lobe in front. The mouth is transverse, with a deep fold enclosing its corners and fleshy suctorial lips. The jaws are larger and more powerful than those of I. brasiliensis, and contain fewer tooth rows, numbering around 29 in the upper jaw and 19 in the lower jaw. The upper teeth are small, narrow, and smooth-edged, upright at the center of the jaw and becoming more angled towards the corners. The lower teeth are massive, the largest teeth relative to body size of any living shark. They are triangular in shape, with minutely serrated edges and interlocking rectangular bases. The five pairs of gill slits are minute.
The small dorsal fins have rounded apices and are placed far back, on the last third of the body. The first dorsal fin originates slightly ahead of the pelvic fins, while the second dorsal originates closely behind and measures almost a third again the height of the first. The pectoral fins are small and rounded, and positioned relatively high on the body behind the fifth gill slit. The pelvic fins are tiny, and there is no anal fin. The caudal fin is very short, with the upper lobe twice as long as the lower and bearing a prominent ventral notch near the tip. The coloration is a plain dark brown, with translucent margins on the fins and sparsely scattered light-emitting photophores on the belly. Most specimens have lacked the dark "collar" found on the throat of I. brasiliensis. However, a specimen caught in 2004 off the Azores did possess the collar. The maximum recorded length is 42 cm (17 in).
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