{"id":28258,"date":"2020-04-07T08:40:21","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T13:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=28258"},"modified":"2020-04-07T08:40:21","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T13:40:21","slug":"exploring-all-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/04\/07\/exploring-all-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring All Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Southern Right Whale.<\/em>
Source: Hakai Magazine<\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Sometimes the solutions to the common tasks of living can be odd. Consider the ingestion and processing of food, from the four stomachs of cows to the baleen of certain species of whale.<\/p>\n

And then there’s this shark, thankfully long extinct:<\/p>\n

About 310 million years ago\u00a0some sharks had saws for jaws<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and now we know how one of those sharks, called\u00a0Edestus<\/em>, fed. The \u201csaw blade\u201d in its lower jaw glided backwards and forwards like the blade on some modern power tools, allowing the shark to cut through soft prey like fish.<\/p>\n

We know that\u00a0Edestus<\/em>\u00a0was a very odd shark that grew to the size of a\u00a0modern great white<\/a>. It had what look a lot like two saw blades in its mouth \u2013 one in the upper and one in the lower jaw. The two blades, which could each be 40 centimetres long but just 3 cm wide, seem to have locked together when the shark closed its mouth, a bit like the blades on a pair of serrated scissors. …<\/p>\n

A careful analysis shows that it had a distinctive hinge between the lower jaw and the rest of its skull. This allowed the lower jaw \u2013 and its saw blade \u2013 to slide back and forth relative to the upper blade, which stayed fixed in place. [Leif Tapanila at Idaho State University and his colleagues] says the lower jaw worked a bit like the blade on a jigsaw power tool. \u201cIt pulled backwards during the bite. This raked the upper and lower teeth past the food, slicing and splitting it in half.\u201d [NewScientist<\/a><\/strong>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I regret to say I did not find a picture of the fossil, or an artist’s rendering, that I felt was freely available, so you’ll just have to imagine it for yourself.<\/p>\n

And let’s not forget Helicaprion<\/em>:<\/p>\n