All living sharks, rays and chimaeras belong to the cartilaginous fishes, the class Chondrichthyes. There are over 1170 known living species, including more then 160 undescribed species. The cartilaginous fishes are subdivided into two groups, the subclass Elasmobranchii, which includes all modern sharks and rays, and the subclass Holocephali, which includes all chimaeras. An internationally agreed-upon checklist and species list do not exist. The interrelationships and validity of several species are still issues under debate.

For personal use I prepared an up-to-date checklist of all known living sharks, rays and chimaeras, both formally described and as yet undescribed. The checklist is a compilation of recently published literature. The taxonomy is based on the internet versions of FishBase (Froese & Pauly (eds.), 2004) and Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer, W.N., (ed.), 2005), Leonard Compagno's sharks of the world FAO species catalogues (Compagno, 1984, 2001) and checklist of living elasmobranchs (Compagno, 1999), and several other publications. A short list of the main references used for compiling this checklist is provided.

Species which are included in FishBase are provided with a direct link to the FishBase species summary page. Just click on the underlined FishBase links in the checklist.

Common names in English (En) and Dutch (Du) are also included in this checklist. The English common names are mainly obtained from FAO publications and FishBase. The Dutch common names are largely adopted from Peter Bor's Dutch name list for extant sharks and rays (Bor, 2002). If no suitable Dutch common name was available, I translated the English common name or scientific name into Dutch.

The interrelationships of living elasmobranchs and composition of higher-level groups within the Elasmobranchii are presently undergoing major revisions, which are, however, strongly divergent. The following, more traditional, classification of Chondrichthyes to orders is adopted from Compagno (1999b). Click on the orders to display its families, genera, and species.