science @lemmy.world General_Effort @lemmy.world 1mo ago

Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find

phys.org Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find

Anyone who has ever squirmed through a dental cleaning can tell you how sensitive teeth can be. This sensitivity gives important feedback about temperature, pressure—and yes, pain—as we bite and chew our food. However, the sensitive parts inside the hard enamel first evolved for something quite diff...

WHAT?!

Original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08944-w

20 comments

So that's why they are so freaking sensitive!
I wonder if this was how sharks got their skin teeth
- Holy crap. I'd heard of placoid scales but had no idea they were homologous to teeth. Thank you for sharing.
  
  It's just a cool piece of information that it's impossible not to share.
New teeth horror just dropped.
Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find.
- thats right
  
  Why do people do this? Not the first time I've seen someone comment the title of the post and nothing else. On Reddit, that would've been a sure sign that it was a GPT bot because that's the kind of thing those bots do occasionally when they slip up.
  
  What?
That explains narwhals 🦄
Imagine. You're a fish just swimming around. You have skin that senses like a humans teeth can sense....a larger creature comes and crunches you and your teeth skin with their gigantic boned armoured jaw.

And then remember the last time novacaine didn't work when someone was drilling your teeth.
Stuff evolves from the most unexpected stuff
We come from the sea.

20 comments