Can you tell what jaw a tooth was on?

[Top Trilo]

I was wondering if it was possible to determine if you could tell if a tooth came from the top or bottom jaw? If you can is this true for all kinds of animals. I bet you could on a tiger shark because the bottom and top face different directions. Could you tell on a megalodon tooth or a tyrannosaur tooth or any dinosaur tooth for that matter. I don't have any teeth that I need to determine, just a question that popped in my head.

[PrehistoricWonders]

@Troodon could on dinosaur teeth, but f

most people couldn’t, as for megalodon teeth, yes, you can tell whether a tooth is top, bottom, posterior, I can’t really tell more than that, but that is good enough for me, and unless you were planning on making a jaw and wanted every tooth anatomically correct, it doesn’t matter to much(I may be making an assumption, but that’s how I feel, at least)

[Top Trilo]

Thanks, I was just wondering

[Troodon]

Yes some species of shark teeth can be distinguished between upper and lowers.  Typically you can distinguish between upper and lower of most Tyrannosaurid teeth the exception being Nanotyrannus 

[PrehistoricWonders]

Yeah, megs, makos, cows and hemis you can distinguish what place in the mouth they came from.

[Anomotodon]

It depends on the taxon, there are no universal rules. Some species have just monognathic heterodonty (different teeth within one jaw) some also have dignathic (between two jaws). For example, Carcharhinid sharks have thin elongated and sometimes unserrated cusps on lower teeth while upper teeth are broader and curved distally.

 

 

Hexanchids also have a clear dignathic heterodonty

 

 

For some reptilian taxa it could be useful to look at the feeding wear. Many, for example sauropods, have a slight overbite, so feeding wear would be on the lingual side on upper teeth and on the labial side on lower teeth. Although it varies a lot based on dentition and might not be applicable to all sauropsid groups.

 

So this would be an upper tooth of Rebbachisaurus (feeding wear on the flatter lingual side)

 

Upper tooth of a Kem Kem Titanosauriform

 

 

And a lower tooth of Rebbachisaurus (feeding wear on the convex labial side)

 

Lower tooth of a Kem Kem Titanosauriform

 

 

Hadrosaurs also can be distinguished based on feeding wear but they also have different upper/lower morphologies

 

Maxilla: more laterally compressed teeth with a more pronounced central ridge

 

 

Dentary: wider, more diamond shaped teeth

 

[Coco]

Hi,

 

About shark jaws, have a look on my signature -> heterodonty.

 

Coco