Nov 14, 2016 | By Alec
Tooth-like structures can be found in vertebrates throughout the history of the world, and the ancestors of sharks and related fish species might even be the first to develop them from rough shapes on the jaw that could grind down food. Exactly because they are so common in so many species, teeth and jaws are a very important target for evolutionary biologists – as they can aid researchers in tracking the evolutionary process of various animals.
The only problem is that fossil evidence is almost never suitable for testing biological functions, and testing the effectiveness of various teeth structures (and effectiveness is always a driver of evolution) can therefore be quite difficult. But 3D printing is coming to the rescue. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a set of 3D printed teeth that were used to test the damaging ability jaws of the earliest mammals. Through this approach, they found evidence for the theory that the ability for teeth to damage prey is a much more significant reason for evolutionary success than bite force or the animal's energy expenditure.
In a nutshell, this 3D printing approach thus created a new analysis for evolutionary biomechanics studies. The 3D printed teeth themselves were based on the teeth of 200-million-year-old insect eating mammals, and could change the way natural selection is studied through dental morphology. Tooth shape is, after all, linked to diet and feeding and a lot of knowledge of early mammal evolution is already derived from dental studies. The Amherst findings are published in the latest edition of the British Royal Society journal.
This breakthrough was realized by evolutionary biology doctoral student Andrew John Conith and his su...
SOURCE: 3ders.org ( go on reading...)
