Somniosus antarcticus Whitley, 1939

Ebert, David A., Wintner, Sabine P. & Kyne, Peter M., 2021, An annotated checklist of the chondrichthyans of South Africa, Zootaxa 4947 (1), pp. 1-127 : 32-33

Somniosus antarcticus Whitley, 1939

Southern Sleeper Shark

Somniosus antarcticus Whitley, 1939: 242 . Holotype (unique): tooth and skin samples (location unknown). Type locality: Macquarie Island, south of Tasmania, Australia. Species described from a drawing in Waite, 1916: 51, fig. 10.

Local synonymy: Somniosus microcephalus: Bass et al., 1976: 43 ; Compagno, 1984a: 103, fig.; Bass et al., 1986: 60, fig. 5.23; Compagno et al., 1989: 32, pl. Somniosus cf. microcephalus: Compagno et al., 1991: 66 . Somniosus antarcticus: Compagno, 1999: 115 ; Yano et al., 2004: 369; Compagno et al., 2005: 117, fig., pl. 12; Ebert, 2013: 98, fig. 137; Ebert et al., 2013 a: 156, fig., pl. 15; Ebert & Dando, 2014: 89, fig.; Ebert, 2015: 95, fig. 112; Ebert & van Hees, 2015: 144; Weigmann, 2016: 900.

South Africa voucher material: SAIAB 203925, SAM 23747, SAM 32671, SAM 34721, SAM 35443.

South Africa distribution: Known from a few specimens taken between Cape Columbine and Saldanha Bay , and from southwest of Cape Town (WC) .

Remarks: The first record of this species was taken off Cape Columbine (WC) in 1963 and identified as S. microcephalus . However, Yano et al. (2004) examined additional specimens from off the WC and in the Southern Hemisphere and concluded that these were a different species, S. antarcticus .

Conservation status: LC (2018).