It is found in the shallow coastal waters and estuaries of the Indo-West Pacific, ranging from the Persian Gulf to southern Japan, Papua New Guinea and northern Australia.

[7][8] The narrow sawfish grows to a maximum length of about 3.5 m (11 ft), although there are highly questionable and unconfirmed claims of much larger individuals.

[6] Its body is generally shark-like, but its most obvious feature is the flattened head, which is extended forward in a blade-like bony snout with, in Australian waters, 18 to 22 pairs of sideways-facing teeth.

The skin of young sawfish is smooth, but on older individuals, it is sparsely covered in dermal denticles.

It is, or was, present in the waters off Iran, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Burma, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.

At present, it is known to exist only in the eastern Arabian Sea, parts of South Asia and Australia and Papua New Guinea.

The narrow sawfish prefers soft bottom-substrates, such as sand, mud, or seagrass, to rocky or coraline habitats.

[10] The narrow sawfish is euryhaline, meaning it can tolerate a wide range of salinity and move between estuarine and marine environments.

The pups are usually 43 – 61 cm long at birth, and their rostral teeth are not fully developed, being covered by a membrane, which prevents them from damaging the mother's tissues.

The head and rostrum of the sawfish contain thousands of electroreception organs called ampullae of lorenzini, which allow it to sense and locate the electric fields of its prey.

Sawfish are commonly hunted to make shark fin soup or for their rostrums to be displayed as trophies.

The toothed rostrum makes it vulnerable to most types of fishing gear, particularly nets, with those made of nylon more difficult for sawfish to extricate themselves from.

Damaged, neglected, or lost fishing gear (aka ghost nets) are also a considerable threat to narrow sawfish.

Coastal development, coastline urbanisation, and an expanding mining industry result in the modification and destruction of critical habitat.

[12] The 2023 assessment again categorized it as critically endangered, citing an estimated decrease in the global population by more than 80% in three sawfish generations or 18 years.

[14] On June 4, 2013, the NMFS published a proposal that concluded all five sawfish species were at high risk for extinction.

The proposal listed habitat loss, water quality, and overutilization as the biggest threats to the narrow sawfish.

"First record of the knifetooth sawfish Anoxypristis (Elasmobranchii: Rhinopristiformes) from the Pliocene of Tuscany (central Italy)".