 Since the pigeye shark so strongly resembles the bull shark, morphology-based phylogenetic studies have considered the two species to be closely related.Neither this nor any other arrangement is strongly supported by molecular phylogenetic research, which to date has been inconclusive regarding this shark's evolutionary relationship to other "Carcharhinus" species.Genetic analysis of pigeye sharks across northern Australia suggest that the evolutionary history of this species was affected by coastline changes during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 12,000 years ago).