Plicidentine in the Early Permian Parareptile Colobomycter pholeter, and Its Phylogenetic and Functional Significance Among Coeval Members of the Clade
What is in a tooth? It turns out there is a lot more than you might have thought, and the amazing ability of teeth to be preserved in the fossil record are providing PhD students Mark MacDougall and Aaron LeBlanc (Reisz Lab) new insights into the evolution, phylogeny, behaviour and anatomy of ancient reptiles. Mark and Aaron recently published “Plicidentine in the Early Permian Parareptile Colobomycter pholeter, and Its Phylogenetic and Functional Significance Among Coeval Members of the Clade” in PLoS one. Their paper looks at folded dentine in the teeth of several Permian parareptiles using histological analysis, as well as CT scans. They show that folded dentine is highly variable among parareptiles, ranging from entirely absent to extremely complex. They propose that one functional use of folded dentine is to increase the surface area for attachment of teeth. They also note that the presence/absence of folded dentine should not be used as a character in phylogenetic analyses of Parareptilia due to its large variability.
Congratulations, Mark and Aaron, on this interesting discovery!