“If you had been in Cleveland 360 million years ago, you would be swimming for your life,” said Rachael Funnel a few days ago and the truth is that he is absolutely right in the world. Not only because, at that time, the area in which the North American city is located was a shallow ocean, but because in those waters there was an exceptionally bizarre bug.
Welcome to the world of Dunkleosteus terrelli.
The fact that? In essence, a predator measuring more than four meters very different from any fish alive today. Although, to tell the truth, they were also different from any fish from 360 million years ago.
And why are we talking about this now? Because it was just published a study in Anatomical Record in which the best preserved remains of the species (preserved for millions of years in layers of black shale) have been analyzed. And honestly, what they found is a little scary.
They have been able to analyze in detail the bone plates that ‘armored’ the head and trunk of these fish. Furthermore, by analyzing muscle inserts and bone canals, they have unraveled the functional characteristics of the jaw, showing that, in short, we are facing a terrible predator.
But ‘terrible’ in the literal sense. To begin with, because D. Terrelli It did not have teeth in the conventional sense: they had large blades of bone that worked with enormous blades that captured and tore apart everything they caught. To continue, because it is one of the first examples of the existence of a specific jaw muscle.
The science of sea monsters. He Dunkleosteus terrelli is not news to us: “the last important work that examined in detail the mandibular anatomy of Dunkleosteus was published in 1932, when the anatomy of arthrodirans was still little known”, remembered Russell Engelmanprincipal investigator.
For years (for decades!), we have been content to put bones back together correctly and that has prevented us from fully understanding what was happening. For example, not understanding the functionality of these creatures has prevented us from understanding many fundamental characteristics of sharks from an evolutionary point of view. In the end, behind all those bone plates, there was a huge amount of cartilage.
That is to say, once again, the world of monsters hides many interesting things to understand natural history. Something that, although it may not seem like it, we still need.
Image | Nell Conway
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