Edestus heinrichi morphology and feeding habits - How could it eat ?

[Siegchomimus]

Hello,

 

I recently acquired an Edestus Heinrichi jaw fragment and wanted to draw an illustration of the animal. But all the images I can find on internet are so weird though.... How could it feed with such a jaw? It's so different from what we see today....From what I have read, it either used it's jaw like scissors or kind of like a hammer (like the sawshark ??) ?

Also, how can paleontologist know how to reconstruct such a weird animal, no full skeleton can be found since they are mostly made of cartilage.

 

 

[doushantuo]

e.g.:

Acta Zoologica(Stockholm)
90(Suppl. 1): 171–182 (May 2009) 

Lebedev, O.A. 2009. A new specimen of Helicoprion Karpinsky, 1899 from Kazakhstanian Cisurals ,and a new reconstruction of its tooth whorl position
and function

LebedevhelicopriondentifunctaetiolselacNICE2009.pdf

 

alternatively:

 

Jaws for a spiral-tooth whorl: CT imagesreveal novel adaptation and phylogeny in fossilHelicoprion

Leif Tapanila, Jesse Pruitt, Alan Pradel, Cheryl D. Wilga

Cite this article:

Tapanila L, Pruitt J, PradelA, Wilga CD, Ramsay JB, Schlader R, Didier DA.2013 Jaws for a spiral-tooth whorl: CT imagesreveal novel adaptation and phylogeny in fossilHelicoprion. Biol Lett 9: 20130057

 

 

 

 

rsbl.2013.0057.pdf

Edited February 9, 2023 by doushantuo

[doushantuo]

Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science Vol. 121, no. 1-2 p. 125-133 (2018)

A tooth whorl of Edestus heinrichi (Chondrichthyes, Eugeneodontiformes) displaying progressive macrowear Wayne M. Itano

Itano-2018-EdestusMacrowear.pdf

[Siegchomimus]

 

14 hours ago, doushantuo said:

Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science Vol. 121, no. 1-2 p. 125-133 (2018)

A tooth whorl of Edestus heinrichi (Chondrichthyes, Eugeneodontiformes) displaying progressive macrowear Wayne M. Itano

Itano-2018-EdestusMacrowear.pdf 1.46 MB · 4 downloads

 

Thank you, I will read thoses articles !!

[jdp]

There are partial skulls of Edestus but they're difficult to work with due to preservation type. However, we have substantial fossil records of close relatives and know how the eugeneodont head was constructed and can extrapolate from those to understand what Edestus looked like on a gross level.

Edited February 11, 2023 by jdp