We present new radial velocities for 306 bright ( R < 16 ) galaxies in a 77 deg ^ { 2 } region of the Shapley supercluster measured with the FLAIR-II spectrograph on the UK Schmidt Telescope .

The galaxies we measured were uniformly distributed over the survey area in contrast to previous samples which were concentrated in several rich Abell clusters .
Most of the galaxies ( 230 ) were members of the Shapley supercluster : they trace out two previously unknown sheets of galaxies linking the Abell clusters of the supercluster .
In a 44 deg ^ { 2 } area of the supercluster excluding the Abell clusters , these sheets alone represent an overdensity of a factor of 2.0 \pm 0.2 compared to a uniform galaxy distribution .

The supercluster is not flattened in the Declination direction as was suggested in previous papers .
Within our survey area the new galaxies contribute an additional 50 % to the known contents of the Shapley supercluster with a corresponding increase in its contribution to the motion of the local group .