2024-02-02 11:58:43
The big ancient fish Alienacanthus had a giant bite. – BEAT SCHEFFOLD AND CHRISTIAN KLUG
MADRID, 2 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A new analysis of fossilized remains of an ancient fish discovered in Poland in 1957 indicates that it may be one of the leading contenders for nature’s most extreme bite.
It was initially thought to have a long set of spines on its fins., which led to the name Alienacanthus. But the new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science reveals that these “spines” were actually an immensely elongated lower jaw studded with teeth, giving this species the oldest (and one of the longest) underbites ever recorded, according to the study.
“The new findings of Alienacanthus make things clear about what this animal actually looks like, as it doesn’t have a strange spinal fin, but rather a rather unique lower jaw,” he told livescience.com the study’s lead author, Melina Jobbins, a paleontologist at the University of Zurich.
Alienacanthus lived during the Devonian period (419 million to 358.9 million years ago), when the Earth was separated into two supercontinents. Since the initial discovery of Alienacanthus, Several fossil specimens have been found in the mountains of what is now central Poland and in Morocco, which were located on the northeast and south coasts, respectively, when these ancient fish existed. The presence of the same species at both ends of this supercontinent suggests that Alienacanthus migrated across the ocean, despite fluctuating sea levels, the authors of the new study wrote in The Conversation.
To learn more about this strange fish, researchers looked at two nearly complete skulls discovered in Morocco’s Anti-Atlas mountain range. They soon realized that the long protuberance protruding from the head of Alienacanthus was the lower jaw. and was twice the size of the individual’s skull.
Alienacanthus is a placoderm, a group of armored fish that includes some of the first jawed vertebrates. But unlike its placoderm brethren, Alienacanthus’s upper jaw could move somewhat independently of the skull, which helped accommodate its long lower jaw, the team wrote in The Conversation. “This animal is so unique that the entire jaw mechanism had to work a little differently to accommodate the lower jawJobbins told livescience.com.
The researchers compared Alienacanthus to modern species with mismatched jaws, such as swordfish, to formulate three main hypotheses about how these fish may have capitalized on their underbite: catch live prey, confuse or injure prey, or filter sediment into the ocean basin.
“The most compelling one for us is the first hypothesis, catching live prey, which is based on teeth,” Jobbins said. “The rearward-pointing teeth prevent prey from escaping the mouth once caught.”
The main contender for the title of “world’s worst underbite” is the modern halfbeak (Hemiramphidae), a family of tiny fish with long, beak-shaped jaws found in warm oceans and some estuaries around the world.
The late Devonian period featured “a literally astonishing diversity in the shapes and proportions of evolved jaws“said the study’s lead author, Christian Klug, associate professor of paleontology at the University of Zurich. This included the enormous rod-shaped jaws of the filter-feeding Titanichthys, he added.
Researchers are now studying Alienacanthus to better understand the mechanics of its jaw and the appearance of the rest of its body.
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