Odontaspis ferox Tooth Smalltooth Sandtiger Mackerel Shark (4) Dogfishes Cartilaginous Fishes Chondrichthyes Selachians Elasmobranchs

Smalltooth Sandtiger Mackerel Shark Tooth Odontaspis ferox Dogfishes Cartilaginous Fishes Chondrichthyes Selachians Elasmobranchs Odontaspididae.
Measures: diagonal mm 22, height mm 19, base mm 13, quite rare, with minor cusps, only a piece, as in photos (a missing cusp).
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Common name: Smalltooth Sandtiger Shark Tooth or Bumpytail Ragged-Tooth.

Odontaspis ferox is a Mackerel Shark of the Odontaspididae family, which lives near the seabed of the continental and insular platforms, in all the tropical and subtropical oceans, at depths between 10 and 500 m. but sometimes even in shallow waters. Its length reaches 3.6 m, the coloring is gray on the upper part, paler below, and on the sides there are sometimes red spots.
It has a short pointed snout with a big mouth and full of pin-like protruding teeth. Each tooth has a narrow, high central cusp flanked by 2-3 pairs of lateral cusps. There are 48-56 rows of teeth in the upper jaw and 36-46 rows of teeth in the lower jaw; the anterior large teeth in the upper jaw are separated by the lateral teeth with 2-5 intermediate teeth. Fossil teeth belonging to the Odontaspis ferox were found from lower Pliocene deposits in Italy and Venezuela.
This rare species is often mistaken for the most common gray feeding shark (Carcharias taurus), from which it can be distinguished from its first dorsal fin, which is larger than the second and placed further ahead.
It is an active predator of small bony fishes, squid and crustaceans. In contrast to its formidable size and appearance, this shark is harmless, having never been known to behave aggressively towards humans.
Use the long body cavity and the large oily liver to regulate buoyancy.
The reproduction is ovoviviparous and the embryos feed on the yolk sac and the other eggs produced by the mother, so that at each delivery there are usually two. Meat is used for human nutrition, while the liver has a high content of squalene.