Dental News - Tracing the origin of teeth with modern technology

Dental Tribune International

Thu. 6. October 2016

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CANBERRA, Australia: Biologists have still not been able to establish exactly how and when human teeth first developed in evolutionary history. However, new research from the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra may shed light on the origin of teeth. From high-resolution CT scans, the researchers created 3-D prints of a 400 million-year-old fish fossil in order to determine whether the denticles in the mouth of Buchanosteus, an extinct genus of arthrodire placoderm, represent a transitional stage in the evolution of teeth or just a tooth-like structure.

“We have used CT scanning facilities at ANU to investigate the internal structure of very fragile fossil skulls and braincases that have been acid-etched from limestone rock,” said Dr Gavin Young, a palaeontologist at the ANU Department of Applied Mathematics. The fossil examined in the research is an exceptionally well-preserved Buchanosteus fish that was found about 50 km north-west of Canberra.

“It’s great that we are able to use recent technology, such as micro-CT scanning and 3-D printing, to examine some of the earliest known evidence of tooth-like structures in the most primitive jawed fishes,” Dr Carole Burrow from Queensland Museum, which conducted the research jointly with ANU.

“Placoderms have been a common focus in the question of tooth origins,” Burrow explained. “Our team has been able to examine the gnathal plates of placoderms from the Early Devonian period, and compare their internal and external structure with those of younger placoderms as well as with the true teeth in other jawed fishes.”

According to the researchers, a key question is whether the extinct fish’s gnathal plates were modified from external dermal bones or had denticles representing true teeth with pulp cavities. Their findings thus far challenge previous research that suggested that the armoured fish had real teeth, suggesting instead that the fish possessed a more primitive form of teeth. However, the research team is conducting further research on the internal tissue structure of the denticles to determine their evolutionary significance.

The results of the research thus far were published online on 27 September in Biology Letters in an article titled “Placoderms and the evolutionary origin of teeth: A comment on Rücklin & Donoghue (2015)”.

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