Critically Endangered
Dwarf sawfish
Pristis clavata
The dwarf sawfish or Queensland sawfish is a sawfish of the family Pristidae, found in tropical Australia.
Appearance
The first dorsal fin is located directly above, or slightly behind, the origins of the pelvic fins, and the caudal fin has a very small lower lobe. The snout is broad and flat and is elongated into a rostrum with around twenty pairs of rostral teeth. This fish is usually greenish-brown, or occasionally yellowish-brown, on its dorsal surface, and whitish underneath.
This endangered species is the smallest species in its family.
The dwarf sawfish has a torpedo-shaped body that resembles that of a shark, and grows to a length of about 3.2 m (10.5 ft).
Range and habitat
The dwarf sawfish is native to the western and central Indo-Pacific region and historically had a much wider range than it does now. Its present confirmed range is from southern New Guinea to the tropical region of northern Australia. A recorded sighting from the Canary Islands was probably of a different species.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The rostrum has large numbers of pores adapted for electroreception and is probably also used to manipulate prey. At high tide the fish tend to forage and rest among the mangroves.
Little is known of the breeding habits of the dwarf sawfish. It is not known how many young can be carried at one time nor how frequently the fish can breed, but the young are about 65 cm (26 in) long when they are born.
In crisis
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Dwarf sawfish is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Dwarf sawfish, Wikidata item Q244406. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
