 The first known specimen of the smoothtooth blacktip shark was a 75-cm-long, immature male caught by Wilhelm Hein in 1902 and deposited at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna.The location was recorded as the Gulf of Aden near "Gischin", which likely refers to the town of Qishn in eastern Yemen.In 1985, the shark was examined and described as a new species by New Zealand ichthyologist Jack Garrick in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration technical report.