New record of the rare ragged-tooth shark, Odontaspis ferox (Chondrichthyes: Odontaspidae) from the south-west Atlantic identified using DNA bar coding

Abstract

An unidentified shark carcass (minus head, fins and entrails) was landed in Fortaleza, Brazil following its commercial fishery capture off Ceara´ State in north-eastern Brazil. The absence of key morphological characters precluded traditional identifi- cation, necessitating the employment of DNA bar coding techniques. The obtained 639 nts COI sequence fragment perfectly matched six of seven Odontaspis ferox sequences available on the Barcode of Life Data (BOLD) system database, and was 99.2% similar to the seventh.