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As the new year begins, you may be thinking about your eating habits. Whether you follow a vegan, pescatarian, omnivore, raw, or paleo diet, humans are well adapted to eat a variety of foods, because we developed multifunctional teeth and a jaw that moves in three dimensions. What and how early humans chose to eat further shaped our mouths. |
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Scientists are still chewing over how it all happened, so they continue to trace the jaw's evolutionary journey. |
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Microdocodon's slender skeleton suggests that it was an agile and active animal living in trees, with teeth designed for eating insects. (Illustration by April Neander) |
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Mammals are dainty eaters compared to reptiles and sharks, who devour prey whole or in large bites. Scientists now have a Jurassic clue to how modern mammals got their table manners: a "pristine, beautiful fossil" of a shrew-like animal, complete with a tiny movable hyoid bone. |
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The alligator gar, called a living fossil because it has barely changed since the Cretaceous period, vacuums up its prey. |
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CT images of a 335-million-year-old shark fossil reveal sophisticated jaws capable of the suction feeding found in modern bony fishes. |
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Mammals chew up and down as well as side to side--think of how a cow chews--unlike most modern nonmammals. This ability helped early mammals thrive. |
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Baby echidnas--called puggles--can't suckle, so they slurp milk from their mother's skin. This rescued puggle named Beau was nursed at the Taronga Wildlife Hospital outside Sydney, Australia. |
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The ability to suckle, which requires complex mouth and throat anatomy, is a shared characteristic of mammals. But platypuses and echidnas can't nurse. |
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Ionic icon:
John Goodenough, SM'50, PhD'52, wins a Nobel.
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Win this mug:
Forward µChicago and we'll enter you in our monthly drawing.
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Good things come to those who share! Forward µChicago to a friend and be entered to win a prize. Congratulations to last month's contest winner, Kimberly Turner, AB'91.
Sign up to receive µChicago monthly. |
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