Fishes of the Western North Atlantic 241 



Generic Characters. Nostrils entirely separate from mouth j teeth numerous, alike in 

 the 2 jaws, low, rounded, or with somewhat sinuous cutting edge, in mosaic arrangement, 

 several rows functional; spiracles present, of at least moderate size; corners of mouth with 

 a strongly marked labial furrow on each jaw; caudal with well marked subterminal notch, 

 its lower anterior corner expanded as a short lobe in some species but not in others; dorsals, 

 anal and pelvics with their posterior corners considerably produced and their posterior 

 margins moderately concave; origin of anal below 2nd dorsal; rear end of base of ist 

 dorsal considerably anterior to origin of pelvics; in some species there is a placental attach- 

 ment between mother and embryo, but in others this is lacking. Characters otherwise those 

 of the family. 



Remarks. The members of the genus are separated from others of this family by their 

 low rounded teeth, arranged in mosaic. 



Range. Widely distributed in coastal waters in the warm and warm-temperate belts 

 of the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific, north and south; Gulf of Maine to northern Argentina 

 in the western Atlantic; Shetland Islands, North Sea and mouth of the Baltic to tropical 

 West Africa (Senegambia, Cameroons) in the eastern Atlantic, including the Mediter- 

 ranean, Madeira and the Canaries; also South Africa; western Indian Ocean (Natal); 

 Red and Arabian Seas; Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand; Indo-China, China, Korea 

 and Japan; west coasts of North, Central, and South America from northern California 

 to northern Chile. 



Fossil Teeth. Oligocene to Pliocene, Europe. 



Species. Although the members of this genus resemble one another very closely in 

 general appearance, certainly two, and probably three, recognizably distinct species occur 

 in the eastern Atlantic, four in the western Atlantic, four along the western coasts of 

 America; also at least two or three and perhaps more in the western Pacific, in the Aus- 

 tralian-New Zealand region and in the Indian Ocean with its tributary seas. We have 

 already published a comparison of the western Atlantic species with those of the eastern 

 Atlantic and eastern Pacific.^ The next step would be to compare these with their western 

 Pacific-Australian-Indian Ocean relatives. However, since we lack sufficient material for 

 this, the following key is limited to the Atlantic and to the eastern side of the Pacific. 



Key to Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Species 



la. Lower anterior corner of caudal expanded as a pointed lobe directed rearward (Fig. 

 43 D). 



2a. Upper labial furrow as long as lower, or longer; denticles on shoulders loosely 

 spaced. norrisi Springer, 1939, p. 254. 



2b. Upper labial fold shorter than lower; denticles on shoulders closely imbricate. 



lunulatus Jordan and Gilbert, 1882. 



Southern California to Colombia. 

 3. Bigelow and Schroeder, Bull. Boston Soc. nat. Hist., ^i (8), 1940: 417. 



