 In 1775 , Carsten Niebuhr published <unk> animalium – avium , amphibiorum , <unk> , <unk> , <unk> : <unk> in <unk> <unk> <unk> , the work of his late friend , the Swedish naturalist Peter Forsskål . Within Forsskål had described Raja <unk> , now commonly known as the <unk> stingray , with a spotted variant he called uarnak , derived from an Arabic word that describes the color pattern . No type specimen was designated . Forsskål 's account formed the basis for two subsequent writings that named the spotted ray as a distinct species : Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre 's Raia <unk> in 1788 , and Johann Friedrich Gmelin 's Raja uarnak in 1789 . Although Bonnaterre 's name was published first and thus would have had precedence , later authorities have regarded Forsskål 's uarnak as the earliest available name even though it was not initially part of a binomial . Consequently , modern sources give uarnak as the valid specific epithet and either Gmelin or Forsskål as the species authority . In 1837 , Johannes Peter Müller and Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle included the reticulate whipray in the newly created genus Himantura ; David Starr Jordan and Barton Warren <unk> made it the type species in 1896 . 
