Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Dunkleosteus

From The Age:

"The armour-plated fish Dunkleosteus was a 10 metre-long, 3,600 kg monster that terrorised other marine life in the Devonian Period, which spanned 415 million to 360 million years ago.
"While lacking true teeth, Dunkleosteus used two long, bony blades in its mouth to snap and crush nearly any creature unfortunate enough to encounter it.
Scientists at the Field Museum in Chicago and the University of Chicago decided to test Dunkleosteus's reputation for wielding some of the most powerful jaws ever on Earth, creating a biomechanical model to simulate its jaws.
"They came away impressed.
"In research published in Britain's Royal Society journal Biology Letters, they said the big fish's bite packed 5,000 kilograms of force.
"The bony blades in its mouth, almost certainly enamelled like teeth, concentrated the bite force into a small area at the tip at an astonishing force of 36,000 kg per square inch, they said." ...

"The researchers also determined that Dunkleosteus could open its mouth very rapidly - in a 50th of a second - which formed a suction force drawing prey into the gaping mouth. It is very rare for a fish to possess both a powerful and a fast bite, they said."

[Full news posted to StrangeArk archive.]

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