Laura is a science news writer, covering a wide variety of subjects, but she is particularly fascinated by all things aquatic, paleontology, nanotechnology, and exploring how science influences daily life. Laura is a proud former resident of the New Jersey shore, a competitive swimmer, and a fierce defender of the Oxford comma.
The saber-toothed cats that once prowled modern day California had more distinct dental features than even their sabers would suggest. Some of the complete skulls had a tooth socket occupied by two teeth–a permanent saber tooth and a baby tooth that would eventually fall out. These double-toothed sockets may have helped stabilize their signature front fangs and keep them from breaking off. The findings are described in a study published April 8 in the journal The Anatomical Record.
Jack Tseng/UC Berkeley In an earlier study, a team from the University of California, Berkeley speculated that a baby tooth helped stabilize the permanent tooth against sideways breakage as it emerged from the gums. The baby tooth–also called a milk canine–are the types of teeth that all mammals grow and lose sometime before adulthood. The growth data seemed to imply that the two teeth sat there together for up to 30 months into the animal’s adolescence.
Jack Tseng/UC Berkeley. 'According to beam theory, when you bend a blade-like structure laterally sideways in the direction of their narrower dimension, they are quite a lot weaker compared to the main direction of strength,' said Tseng. 'Prior interpretations of how saber tooths may have hunted use this as a constraint. No matter how they use their teeth, they could not have bent them a lot in a lateral direction.
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