Jawless Creature Had the World's Sharpest Teeth 53
ananyo writes "An extinct primitive marine vertebrate had the sharpest dental structures ever known — with tips just one-twentieth of the width of a human hair, but able to apply pressures that could compete easily with those from human jaws. The razor-sharp teeth belonged to conodonts, jawless vertebrates that evolved some 500 million years ago in the Precambrian eon and went extinct during the Triassic period, around 200 million years ago. The creatures roamed the planet for longer than any other vertebrate so far–– and despite their lack of jaws, they were the first creatures to evolve teeth (abstract)."
Here is the wikipedia article (Score:5, Informative)
of this eel-like creature [wikipedia.org]... looks like we don't know much about them aside from their teeth?
Meteorites suck. I mean blow.
Re:How accurate? (Score:5, Informative)
Not as much as you would think. Conodonts are composed of calcium phosphate -- the same stuff as our teeth. It's fairly durable mineral. They are usually extracted from rocks in almost unaltered state. Conodonts do get broken and worn like any other sediment particle, so sometimes they're a bit beaten up, but often they are nearly intact despite being fairly fragile-looking structures. Sometimes their surfaces even show wear from the time when the animal was alive (i.e. tooth wear). Growth lines and other structures are visible internally.
The rest of the animal -- the body -- is soft tissues, so that part rarely preserves and is flattened even when it is preserved, however, multiple specimens compressed in different orientations reveal the 3D structure. There are also slightly more robust structures around the eye sockets (sclerotic capsules).