Monster fish crushed opposition with strongest bite ever Dunkleosteus, 400 million years ago
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Monster fish crushed opposition with strongest bite ever
Chomping champion ... The dunkleosteus measured up to 10 metres long, weighed 3600 kgs and had armour-plating around its head.
Chomping champion ... The dunkleosteus measured up to 10 metres long, weighed 3600 kgs and had armour-plating around its head.
Photo: Reuters
Ian Sample in London
November 30, 2006
MEET Dunkleosteus, a four-tonne, 10-metre, armour-plated fish that was arguably the first king of the beasts. The monstrous fish cruised the oceans 400 million years ago, preying on creatures much larger than itself, its blade-like fangs adept at tearing its quarry in two.
Using fossilised skull remains, scientists have built up a biomechanical model of the fish's powerful jaw and surrounding musculature, and they say it had the strongest bite of any fish ever to exist.
Philip Anderson's team at the University of Chicago found that the predator's jaws snapped shut with a force of more than five tonnes. The jaws were articulated by a unique mechanism based on four rotational joints working in harmony, they report in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters, published yesterday.
Dunkleosteus was the first known large predator, pre-dating the dinosaurs. It belonged to a diverse group of armoured fish, placoderms, that dominated the oceans in the Devonian period between 360 million and 415 million years ago. Its formidable bite allowed it to feast on other armoured aquatic animals, including primitive sharks and smaller creatures protected by bone-like casings.
"Dunkleosteus was able to devour anything in its environment," Dr Anderson said.
While lacking true teeth, the fish used two long, bony blades in its mouth to snap and crush nearly any creature unfortunate enough to encounter it. The bladed jaws, which enabled the beast to take on prey much larger than its mouth, are a feature sharks did not develop until 100 million years later.
"It kind of blows sharks out of the water as far as bite force goes," Mark Westneat, the curator of fishes at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and co-author of the paper, said. "A huge great white shark is probably only capable of biting at about half that force."
He added: "The most interesting part of this work for me was discovering that this heavily-armoured fish was both fast during jaw-opening and quite powerful during jaw-closing. This is possible due to the unique engineering design of its skull and different muscles used for opening and closing. And it made this fish into one of the first true apex predators seen in the vertebrate fossil record."
Guardian News & Media, Reuters
National Geographic News: Reporting Your World Daily
Photo in the News: Giant "Terrible Fish" Packed Most Powerful Bite
Terrible fish skull photo
RELATED
* Video: T. Rex's Bone-Shattering Bite Filmed
* SuperCroc's Jaws Were Superstrong, Study Shows (April 8, 2002)
* National Geographic Magazine: "Dinosaurs Come Alive"
November 29, 2006Bite your tongue, Jaws.
This giant prehistoric sea predator packed the most powerful bite of any fish, living or extinctstrong enough to shear a shark clean in half, scientists say.
Researchers discovered this awesome jaw power while studying the fossilized skull of Dunkleosteus terrelli, or "terrible fish," a 33-foot (10-meter) behemoth that lived 400 million years ago in what is now Ohio .
Scientists from the University of Chicago and Chicago 's Field Museum used the monster's skull to recreate the musculature of the fish's head and found that its colossal jaws delivered a bite with a remarkable 1,100 pounds (540 kilograms) of force.
That rivals the infamous crunch of Tyrannosaurus rex, the researchers say.
(See a National Geographic magazine feature about re-creating T. rex's bite.)
What's more, the fish's bladed, quadruple-hinged jaws focused this force at the creature's front fangs, which struck at a literally bone-crushing 8,000 pounds per square inch (562 kilograms per square centimeter)enough to crack modern concrete.
This mighty munching power put the whole ocean on the ancient fish's menu, scientists say. Dunkleosteus dined freely on everything from giant mollusks and crustaceans to, yes, sharks, making it one of the world's first rulers of the food chain.
"Dunkleosteus was able to devour anything in its environment," lead researcher Philip Anderson, of the University of Chicago , said in a statement released yesterday.
"[Its bite] made this fish into one of the first true apex predators seen in the vertebrate fossil record," colleague Mark Westneat, the Field Museum 's curator of fishes, added.
Blake de Pastino
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image004.jpg (22KB); image005.gif (4KB); image006.jpg (35KB); image007.jpg (8KB)
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Monster fish crushed opposition with strongest bite ever
Chomping champion ... The dunkleosteus measured up to 10 metres long, weighed 3600 kgs and had armour-plating around its head.
Chomping champion ... The dunkleosteus measured up to 10 metres long, weighed 3600 kgs and had armour-plating around its head.
Photo: Reuters
Ian Sample in London
November 30, 2006
MEET Dunkleosteus, a four-tonne, 10-metre, armour-plated fish that was arguably the first king of the beasts. The monstrous fish cruised the oceans 400 million years ago, preying on creatures much larger than itself, its blade-like fangs adept at tearing its quarry in two.
Using fossilised skull remains, scientists have built up a biomechanical model of the fish's powerful jaw and surrounding musculature, and they say it had the strongest bite of any fish ever to exist.
Philip Anderson's team at the University of Chicago found that the predator's jaws snapped shut with a force of more than five tonnes. The jaws were articulated by a unique mechanism based on four rotational joints working in harmony, they report in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters, published yesterday.
Dunkleosteus was the first known large predator, pre-dating the dinosaurs. It belonged to a diverse group of armoured fish, placoderms, that dominated the oceans in the Devonian period between 360 million and 415 million years ago. Its formidable bite allowed it to feast on other armoured aquatic animals, including primitive sharks and smaller creatures protected by bone-like casings.
"Dunkleosteus was able to devour anything in its environment," Dr Anderson said.
While lacking true teeth, the fish used two long, bony blades in its mouth to snap and crush nearly any creature unfortunate enough to encounter it. The bladed jaws, which enabled the beast to take on prey much larger than its mouth, are a feature sharks did not develop until 100 million years later.
"It kind of blows sharks out of the water as far as bite force goes," Mark Westneat, the curator of fishes at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and co-author of the paper, said. "A huge great white shark is probably only capable of biting at about half that force."
He added: "The most interesting part of this work for me was discovering that this heavily-armoured fish was both fast during jaw-opening and quite powerful during jaw-closing. This is possible due to the unique engineering design of its skull and different muscles used for opening and closing. And it made this fish into one of the first true apex predators seen in the vertebrate fossil record."
Guardian News & Media, Reuters
National Geographic News: Reporting Your World Daily
Photo in the News: Giant "Terrible Fish" Packed Most Powerful Bite
Terrible fish skull photo
RELATED
* Video: T. Rex's Bone-Shattering Bite Filmed
* SuperCroc's Jaws Were Superstrong, Study Shows (April 8, 2002)
* National Geographic Magazine: "Dinosaurs Come Alive"
November 29, 2006Bite your tongue, Jaws.
This giant prehistoric sea predator packed the most powerful bite of any fish, living or extinctstrong enough to shear a shark clean in half, scientists say.
Researchers discovered this awesome jaw power while studying the fossilized skull of Dunkleosteus terrelli, or "terrible fish," a 33-foot (10-meter) behemoth that lived 400 million years ago in what is now Ohio .
Scientists from the University of Chicago and Chicago 's Field Museum used the monster's skull to recreate the musculature of the fish's head and found that its colossal jaws delivered a bite with a remarkable 1,100 pounds (540 kilograms) of force.
That rivals the infamous crunch of Tyrannosaurus rex, the researchers say.
(See a National Geographic magazine feature about re-creating T. rex's bite.)
What's more, the fish's bladed, quadruple-hinged jaws focused this force at the creature's front fangs, which struck at a literally bone-crushing 8,000 pounds per square inch (562 kilograms per square centimeter)enough to crack modern concrete.
This mighty munching power put the whole ocean on the ancient fish's menu, scientists say. Dunkleosteus dined freely on everything from giant mollusks and crustaceans to, yes, sharks, making it one of the world's first rulers of the food chain.
"Dunkleosteus was able to devour anything in its environment," lead researcher Philip Anderson, of the University of Chicago , said in a statement released yesterday.
"[Its bite] made this fish into one of the first true apex predators seen in the vertebrate fossil record," colleague Mark Westneat, the Field Museum 's curator of fishes, added.
Blake de Pastino
image004.jpg (22KB); image005.gif (4KB); image006.jpg (35KB); image007.jpg (8KB)
image004.jpg (22KB); image005.gif (4KB); image006.jpg (35KB); image007.jpg (8KB)
