Or 
A REVISION OF THE AUSTRALIAN ORECTOLOBIDA. 26 
Family ORECTOLOBID AI. 
Form variable; tail not or but little bent upward from 
the base of the caudal. Body and fins covered with small, 
smooth or feebly carinated scales. Head with numerous 
mucous pores, especially on the lower surface of the snout. 
Nasal cavity with a free cirrus; oro-nasal grooves present; 
labial folds usually well developed. Hye small, elongate- 
oval, with rounded pupil; no nictitating membrane. Gill- 
slits narrow, the two last closer together than the others; 
three, rarely four, above the pectoral. Two small, sub- 
equal, spineless dorsal fins, the first above or behind the 
ventrals: upper flap of caudal fin vestigial, the lower 
moderately developed, with a shallow notch near its ex- 
tremity and no anterior lobe; pectorals and ventrals large. 
*‘Rostral cartilages, if present, short and not convergent. 
Pectoral mesopterygium enlarged and expanded distally, 
more or less similar to the metapterygium; an oval foramen 
between the mesopterygium and the metapterygium.’’* 
Sharks of small to large size, inhabiting the tropical and 
temperate zones of the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans; 
one species—Ginglymostoma cirratum’ from the Western 
Tropical Atlantic, occasionally straggling to the African 
coast.” Their food consists chiefly of crustaceans and 
mollusks. 
Key to the Australian genera of the Orectolobidee. 
a. Anal fin commencing in advance of the second dorsal; 
spiracle minute, below the posterior angle of the orbit; 
teeth lanceolate, sometimes feebly cuspidate; species 
oviparous. Paraseyllium. 
1 Skeletal characters taken from Tate Regan’s masterly “Classification 
of the Selachian Fishes,” (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1906, pp. 722 to 758.) 
? Squalus cirratus, Gmelin, Syst. Nat., i, 1789, p. 1492. 
* Cape Verde, fide Capello, Journ. Sci. Phys. Lisbon, 1867, p. 167. 
