Sawfish
The pregnancy lasts several months. There are 1–23 young in each sawfish litter, which are long at birth. In the embryos the rostrum is flexible and it only hardens shortly before birth. To protect the mother the saws of the young have a soft cover, which falls off shortly after birth. The pupping grounds are in coastal and estuarine waters. In most species the young generally stay there for the first part of their lives, occasionally moving upriver when there is an increase in salinity. The exception is the largetooth sawfish where the young move upriver into freshwater where they stay for 3–5 years, sometimes as much as from the sea. In at least the smalltooth sawfish the young show a degree of site fidelity, generally staying in the same fairly small area in the first part of their lives. In the green and dwarf sawfish there are indications that both sexes remain in the same overall region throughout their lives with little mixing between the subpopulations. In the largetooth sawfish the males appear to move more freely between the subpopulations, while mothers return to the region where they were born to give birth to their own young.
Largetooth sawfish
The largetooth sawfish is easily recognized by the forward position of the dorsal fin with its leading edge placed clearly in front of the leading edge of the pelvic fins (when the sawfish is seen from above or the side), the relatively long pectoral fins with angular tips, and the presence of a small lower tail lobe. In all other sawfish species the leading edge of their dorsal fin is placed at, or behind, the leading edge of the pelvic fins, and all other "Pristis" sawfish species have shorter pectoral fins with less pointed tips and lack a distinct lower tail lobe (very small or none). The rostrum ("saw") of the largetooth sawfish has a width that is 15–25% of its length, which is relatively wide compared to the other sawfish species, and there are 14–24 equally separated teeth on each side of it. On average, females have shorter rostrums with fewer teeth than males. The proportional rostrum length also varies with age, with average being around 27% of the total length of the fish, but can be as high as 30% in juveniles and as low as 20–22% in adults.