The queen of the jaw

The prehistoric fish could scare the tyrannosaurus, seeing the prehistoric sea predator Dunkleosteus Terrelli, a shark from the film "The Jaw" would surely take flight. As scientists found out, Dunkleosteus possessed the largest and most powerful jaws in comparison with all living and already extinct fish species.

A predator about 10 meters long and a mass of up to four tons from a group of shell fish lived on the ground about 400 million years ago, in the Devonian period. It was the era of fish when the salty and fresh waters of the earth inhabited the cysterae and radiant fish, raw fish -shaped creatures, crustaceans and mollusks, whose body was closed by a bone shield. In order to enjoy their superbly protected meat, Dunkleostus, like a giant pipe, sucked a victim into his mouth, and then squeezed his jaw with a force worthy of a tyrannosaurus or a large alligator.

The oldest of the famous science of large predators, Dunkelostus appeared long before dinosaurs and frightening giants of the ancient oceans. Nature provided the body of monstrous fish not with scales, but by armored plates. According to scientists, this means that Dunkleostus also hunted for representatives of his species.

The Americans investigated the petrified skulls of five representatives of Dunkleosterelli, stored in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Having resorted to computer modeling, scientists calculated that the jaws of a gluttonous predator equipped with four rows of sharp bone plates with fang -shaped outgrowths were compressed with a force of at least 5300 Newtonons.

The biomechanical model built on the computer also helped restore the structure of the muscles of the dunletus that worked at the bite. Thanks to this, you can calculate the compression speed of its jaws. A huge fish opened its mouth in just 1/50 of a fraction of a second. The pressure of the water fell so sharply that any, even capable of moving very quickly, the victim instantly appeared in the throat of the predator.

Professor Mark Uestryt, curator of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and the co -author of the report published in the Biology Letters journal, notes that the fish usually possess either powerful jaws or a high speed of compression, but never at the same time. “For me, the most interesting thing in the study was to understand how the heavyweight, the fish protected by the bone carapace managed to simultaneously open the jaws so quickly and so powerfully squeezing them, closing their mouths,” says Wesetnit. “This feature of the predator owes the only structure of the skull and muscles that have been responsible for the work of the jaws.”

The jaws equipped with plates helped to absorb the victim significantly exceeding the width of its mouth. Sharks, in order to acquire such a skill, took another 100 million years of evolution, and nevertheless, the jaws of Dunkleosteus remain almost the most powerful of all vertebrates. “Dunkleostus could devour any creature from his environment,” says project manager Philip Anderson from the University of Chicago.

Previously, computer modeling was used to study tyrannosaurs and other extinct creatures. And although at first glance it seems that the giant land dinosaur possessed a more powerful clamp of the jaws, when compared, it turned out that his strength was equivalent to the power of a prehistoric sea predator.

12/05/2006 / Roger Haifield Material published in the "newspaper" No. 224 dated 06.12.2006.