 The crocodile shark was first described as "Carcharias kamoharai" in a 1936 issue of "Zoological Magazine (Tokyo)" by ichthyologist Kiyomatsu Matsubara, based on a long specimen found at the Koti Fish Market in Japan.The type specimen is a long adult male found at a fish market in Su-ao, Taiwan.After being shuffled between the genera "Carcharias" and "Odontaspis" in the family Odontaspididae by various authors, in 1973 Leonard Compagno resurrected Jean Cadenat's 1963 subgenus "Pseudocarcharias" from synonymy for this species and placed it within its own family.