A big ancient fish had a seriously awesome weapon: a spiral full of razor sharp teeth.
Humans are amazing animals, there’s no doubt about it, but you’d have to agree that there are other creatures with much cooler weapons than our own. An ancient fish, for example, used its unusual arc of serrated teeth (which look suspiciously similar to a modern day circular cutting blade) to slice through its unfortunate victims. This sea dweller looked a lot like a big-bodied shark—and was long thought to be a part of the shark family—however new research suggests that it actually belonged to a different but similar group of aquatic vertebrates called helicoprions.
A team of scientists at Idaho State University, in the US, have used CT scans on some well preserved fossil remains of the large fish to visualise what its jaw would have looked like and how it would have used those formidable pearly whites. The scans showed the whorl of serrated teeth was located within the animal’s lower jaw. According to lead researcher Leif Tapanila, when the animal closed its mouth on prey, the tooth spiral would have rotated backwards, like a circular saw, and slash through the meat. Also, because the teeth fossils barely had any wear or breakage the researchers assume that helicoprions probably ate “soft fleshy prey” like squid, and are unlikely to have chomped on hard-shelled or armoured animals.
“The spiral-tooth whorl represents the lifetime production of the animal’s teeth,” explains Tapanila, who is the associate professor of geology at Idaho State University. “Unlike modern sharks that make and shed teeth throughout their lives, Helicoprion made and kept its teeth by wrapping the juvenile teeth in a continuous spiral below the gumline.”
Interestingly, many fish related to helicoprions have partial spirals (arcs) of teeth. Most of them detached the teeth once they reached the edge of the mouth. The helicoprion, however, was unable to shed its teeth so their jaw evolved to become a spiral tooth structure to house the old and used chompers.
“It’s a really improbable animal!” exclaims Tapanila. “But, Helicoprion had a nearly global distribution and existed over a period of 10 million years or more. Now, that’s rather successful.”
Source: [Idaho State University]
Humans are amazing animals, there’s no doubt about it, but you’d have to agree that there are other creatures with much cooler weapons than our own. An ancient fish, for example, used its unusual arc of serrated teeth (which look suspiciously similar to a modern day circular cutting blade) to slice through its unfortunate victims. This sea dweller looked a lot like a big-bodied shark—and was long thought to be a part of the shark family—however new research suggests that it actually belonged to a different but similar group of aquatic vertebrates called helicoprions.
A team of scientists at Idaho State University, in the US, have used CT scans on some well preserved fossil remains of the large fish to visualise what its jaw would have looked like and how it would have used those formidable pearly whites. The scans showed the whorl of serrated teeth was located within the animal’s lower jaw. According to lead researcher Leif Tapanila, when the animal closed its mouth on prey, the tooth spiral would have rotated backwards, like a circular saw, and slash through the meat. Also, because the teeth fossils barely had any wear or breakage the researchers assume that helicoprions probably ate “soft fleshy prey” like squid, and are unlikely to have chomped on hard-shelled or armoured animals.
“The spiral-tooth whorl represents the lifetime production of the animal’s teeth,” explains Tapanila, who is the associate professor of geology at Idaho State University. “Unlike modern sharks that make and shed teeth throughout their lives, Helicoprion made and kept its teeth by wrapping the juvenile teeth in a continuous spiral below the gumline.”
Interestingly, many fish related to helicoprions have partial spirals (arcs) of teeth. Most of them detached the teeth once they reached the edge of the mouth. The helicoprion, however, was unable to shed its teeth so their jaw evolved to become a spiral tooth structure to house the old and used chompers.
“It’s a really improbable animal!” exclaims Tapanila. “But, Helicoprion had a nearly global distribution and existed over a period of 10 million years or more. Now, that’s rather successful.”
Source: [Idaho State University]
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