The strongest jaws in history
ITS titanic jaws could pulverise any creature that came its way, and their strength has not been rivalled 400 million years after it ceased to exist.The armour-plated fish dunkleosteus was a 10m-long, 3600kg monster that terrorised other marine life in the Devonian Period, from 415 million to 360 million years ago.
While lacking true teeth, dunkleosteus used two long, bony blades in its mouth to snap and crush creatures 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.
They came away impressed.
In research published in Britain's Royal Society journal Biology Letters, they said the big fish's bite packed 5000kg 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 36,000kg per square inch, they said.
That, the scientists proclaimed, crowns dunkleosteus as the all-time chomping champion of fish.
"It blows sharks out of the water as far as bite force goes," said Mark Westneat, curator of fish at the Field Museum and the paper's co-author.
"A huge great white shark is probably only capable of biting at about half that bite force.
"It puts it with big crocodiles and alligators and big dinosaurs like tyrannosaurus rex in terms of the most powerful biters ever."
The researchers also determined that dunkleosteus could open its mouth very rapidly - in a 50th of a second - to form a suction force that drew prey into the gaping mouth.
It is very rare for a fish to possess both a powerful and a fast bite, they said.
Dunkleosteus appeared on earth about 175 million years before the first dinosaurs and was one of the first jawed vertebrates.
While lacking true teeth, dunkleosteus used two long, bony blades in its mouth to snap and crush creatures 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.
They came away impressed.
In research published in Britain's Royal Society journal Biology Letters, they said the big fish's bite packed 5000kg 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 36,000kg per square inch, they said.
That, the scientists proclaimed, crowns dunkleosteus as the all-time chomping champion of fish.
"It blows sharks out of the water as far as bite force goes," said Mark Westneat, curator of fish at the Field Museum and the paper's co-author.
"A huge great white shark is probably only capable of biting at about half that bite force.
"It puts it with big crocodiles and alligators and big dinosaurs like tyrannosaurus rex in terms of the most powerful biters ever."
The researchers also determined that dunkleosteus could open its mouth very rapidly - in a 50th of a second - to form a suction force that drew prey into the gaping mouth.
It is very rare for a fish to possess both a powerful and a fast bite, they said.
Dunkleosteus appeared on earth about 175 million years before the first dinosaurs and was one of the first jawed vertebrates.
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