Either God or Evolution is seriously F'ed Up!

[Shaun @ Tru6]

I'm researching dinosaurs for a spring line and found this monstrosity:

The Helicoprion

One description:
A coil of teeth caps the lower jaw of a sculpture of a 13-foot (4-meter) whorl-tooth shark, or Helicoprion, a fish genus that lived about 250 million years ago.

Artist Gary Staab depicts the animal's jaw as something of a spiral conveyor belt, in which new teeth would advance to replace old ones (concealed here by skin) . But the true arrangement and purpose of the teeth remains a mystery. Some scientists suggest that it may have operated like a spiked whip, possibly curled underneath the lower jaw like a weaponized elephant trunk.

Another:
Helicoprion lived about 250 million years ago. It belongs to a group of early sharks whose jaws evolved an elaborate buzz saw-like tooth whorl composed of successively larger replacement teeth, each one fixed to the tooth in front, forming an ever-growing spiral with the earliest (smallest) teeth at its center. This structure may have been used to injure or disable prey, which the shark could then eat at leisure. Helicoprion may have reached lengths over 10 feet, but many of its relatives were smaller and had less impressive tooth spirals.


Helicoprion. The shark itself is poorly known, but the pattern of its teeth is instantly recognisable. They formed a whorl erupting from the back of a semi-circular 'conveyor belt arrangement', but the teeth did not fall away at the front as in modern sharks. Instead, they were rotated under the apex of the lower jaw, and then back up into a cavity under the jaw where they were stored in a tight spiral. Why these sharks possessed such a bizarre dental arrangement is another mystery.

[kang]

The bottom two pictures look like they could be similar to a tongue, rolling out and then back into the mouth, but with teeth on it. That kind of makes sense. The top picture looks like a saw blade, so I tend to think this is an imaginary beast. But who knows, there are a lot of bizarre creatures out there, that’s for sure!

[cantdrv55]

I wonder how many complete fossils of the head and jaw have been found. Probably none. Watch, in a few years you'll probably not hear of this species ever again as if it never really existed. Came out of someone's wild a$$ imagination.

Science once said T Rex's were slow. A few years ago, it was changed to T Rex's can run about 35 mph. Now we're back to square one with T Rex's slow and lumbering. What's next, T Rex's could fly?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

That's cool.

When the genetic engineers get it all figured out, I want gene therapy to grow that. I'd make millions in WWE appearances alone.

[widebody911]

Originally posted by Porsche-O-Phile
When the genetic engineers get it all figured out, I want gene therapy to grow that. I'd make millions in WWE appearances alone.

The little woman might not be a fan, though...

[nostatic]

Thom, I'm sure at least one of the women you've dated would be into that kind of thing...

[kang]

Apparently, the only fossils they have is of the teeth, not of the whole skull, so there is a lot of speculation as to what it actually looked like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicoprion

[M.D. Holloway]

Maybe it was nothing more than a roving jaw. Kinda like a spikey eel.

[Joeaksa]

Reminds me of one of my ex-wives...

[Tervuren]

I'd say some pretty bizzare creatures have gone extinct, but to me the evidence seems to not be much to go on I mean, to construct a whole new animal out of a set of teeth...gheesh. Course, I haven't seen the teeth, perhaps they are very convincing and let us now about the whole animal.

[nota]

no bones in a shark
cartlege only
the only thing they will ever find is the teeth

[Jeff Higgins]

I want to see that reproduced as a diamond studded grille.

[Porsche virgin]

Whatever it was, the arrangement didn't work too well, otherwise they'd still be around.

[Tervuren]

Originally posted by nota
no bones in a shark
cartlege only
the only thing they will ever find is the teeth

Not true - there are - howbeit very rare, scenarios that would allow the entire structure of a shark to fossilize. less rare is to find vertebra, and scales, and most common, are shark teeth.

The assumption here I believe, is having found only teeth, they assume it to be a shark, honestly...could be something we ain't never heard of thought of.

[on-ramp]

I can make a similar case for human beings!

Either God or Evolution is seriously F'ed Up

[Aerkuld]

Don't worry - that was just a test mule.