 German naturalists Marcus Elieser Bloch and Johann Gottlob Schneider described the porcupine ray in their 1801 work Systema <unk> , based on a partial dried skin obtained from Mumbai , India . They placed it in the genus Raja and named it <unk> , meaning " roughest " in Latin . In the same work , they also described a West African form , Raja africana . Later authors have regarded the two as synonymous . However , since the two names were published simultaneously , there is uncertainty about which name has priority . Some works give the ray 's specific epithet as asperrimus , and others as africanus . 
