 Because of its highly variable color pattern , the leopard catshark has historically been known under a multitude of names . In an 1837 issue of Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London , Scottish physician and zoologist Andrew Smith listed without descriptions the new genus Poroderma , containing the species P. africanum ( the pyjama shark ) , P. pantherinum , P. submaculatum , and P. variegatum . German biologists Johannes Peter Müller and Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle assigned these sharks to the genus Scyllium , and in their 1838 – 1841 Systematische Beschreibung der Plagiostomen furnished descriptions for S. pantherinum and S. variegatum , and listed two more names without description , S. leopardinum and S. maeandrinum . In 1934 , American zoologist Henry Weed Fowler described P. marleyi , characterized by large black spots . 
