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First Teeth Grew on the Outside of the Body

The tooth-like lip and cheek scales were found in specimens of ischnacanthid acanthodians similar to this one from the University of Alberta Laboratory for Vertebrate

• New research on Early Devonian fish suggests that the world's first teeth evolved outside of the mouth.
• Scales on the exterior of the prehistoric shark-resembling fish appear to have evolved into teeth.
• Teeth were retained among most vertebrates and were passed down to multiple species, including humans.

The fictional Cheshire cat's smile seemed to have a life of its own, outside of the cat's body, and now new research suggests the world's first teeth grew outside of the mouth before later moving into the oral cavity.

The study, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, supports what is known as the "outside-in" hypothesis of tooth evolution. The first teeth and smile, however, did not belong to a cat, but likely were flashed by small and spiny shark-like fishes.

That initial smile would have looked rather sinister.

"The first smile would probably have been a prickly one, with many tiny teeth that looked like pointy cheek scales, and other small tooth-like scales wrapping around the lips onto the outside of the head," co-author Mark Wilson told Discovery News.

For the study, Wilson, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, and his colleagues studied animals called ischnacanthid acanthodians, an extinct group of fish that resembled sharks.

They lived during the Early Devonian period, which lasted from 416 to 397 million years ago.

The researchers determined that head scales from these fish were in transition, evolving from scales to teeth. The pointy structures were identified on the lips of the fish.

This discovery helps to negate the “inside out” theory of tooth evolution, which holds that the first teeth emerged from structures in the pharynx progressing into the mouth.

Project leader Stephanie Blais, a University of Alberta researcher, told Discovery News that "our findings support the idea that teeth evolved from modified pointed scales on the mouth margins (lips) as we see in Obtusacanthus," one of the prehistoric fish included in the study.

All of the analyzed fish specimens were excavated at the Man on the Hill site in the Mackenzie Mountains of Canada.

As to why teeth first evolved, Blais said they "would have conferred a major advantage in terms of food acquisition. Pointed scales near the margins of their mouths would have helped them grasp prey and hang on to it until they could swallow it whole."

Such prey consisted of "probably whatever they could swallow," co-author Lindsay MacKenzie of the University of Montana’s Department of Geosciences told Discovery News.

Based on fossilized stomach contents and other evidence, their primary prey probably consisted of arthropods, including crustaceans, as well as a variety of soft-bodied creatures and fish.

Blais said jaws, which must have evolved earlier, and the tooth-like formations "allowed fishes to change from a filter-feeding or mud-grubbing more passive lifestyle to one of active predation."

The world's first aggressive conflicts also may have arisen at this point, since the move from passive feeding to hunting led to what Blais termed "the very first evolutionary arms race" among vertebrates, with some becoming predators and others becoming prey.

Aliens and Interstellar Archaeology on the Kardashev Galactic Scale

Kardashev Type III and Its Traces
What would happen if a true galaxy-spanning civilisation went to work on astro-engineering?

We call this a Kardashev Type III civilisation, one that could exploit the power resources of an entire galaxy, and the assumption made has always been that such a culture would be very high profile, if not, blindingly obvious. It's projects would be so vast that our astronomers would be able to detect them by noting anomalies, outside of natural occurences.

Imagine, for example, a galactic culture that encloses each individual star in a Dyson sphere.

Image: M81, a spiral galaxy in Ursa Major. A ‘wavefront’ Dyson sphere culture might spread across such a galaxy, causing stars to drop out of visible light spectrum entirely, and then one by one, to be detected in the infrared. Credit and copyright: Giovanni Benintende.

A Dyson sphere or ‘shell’ would absorb all of the visible light from a star, re-radiating stellar energy at infrared wavelengths. A Dyson ‘ring’ would use planetary materials that would mask only part of the star’s light.

Scientists have used a list of very interesting infrared sources from the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) in their searches, but have come up with no strong Dyson sphere candidates. Nonetheless, Dyson spheres remain interesting, if only because they vastly increase the habitable area around a star.

What would a Type III civilisation do with technologies that could create Dyson spheres not only in one place but across the galaxy?

Whatever the answer, you would think it would be clearly noticeable. Freeman Dyson himself has said that “…a type III (Kardashev civilisation) in our own galaxy would change the appearance of the sky so drastically that it could hardly have escaped our attention.”

James Annis, who has studied anomalous galaxies in a quest for signs of a Type III civilisation, reports: “It is quite clear that the Galaxy itself has not transformed into a type III civilisation based on starlight, nor have M31 or M33, our two large neighbours.” Nonetheless, we wonder whether we should take these statements as conclusive or definitive:

…what would happen for a civilisation that was on its way to becoming a type III civilisation, i.e. a type II.5 civilisation that is developing?

If it was busily turning stars into Dyson spheres the civilisation could create a “Fermi bubble” or void in the visible light from a patch of the galaxy with a corresponding upturn in the emission of infrared light.

This bubble would grow following the lines of a suggestion attributed to Fermi… that patient space travellers moving at 1/1000 to 1/100 of the speed of light could span a galaxy in one to ten million years.

To read more on Interstellar Archaeology ......