""There's a lot of function in the shape of a shark tooth, because that's really where the shark meets the world," said Jonathan Payne, Ph.D. He is a researcher and senior fellow at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He said subtle differences in tooth shape and characteristics can indicate key traits, ranging from body type to what the shark ate during its lifetime."
"Lead author Mohamad Bazzi, Ph.D., compared 1,200 samples from roughly 30 species, including bull sharks and oceanic white tips. All are members of a genus considered threatened by international experts. But Bazzi said species with the most unique characteristics and feeding habits appeared to face the highest risk of extinction. "And, what our analysis showed,' he said, "is how extinctions act, not merely to reduce the number of species, but also the variety of species.""
Shark tooth shape contains functional information about body form and diet because teeth are where sharks interact with prey. Cartilaginous skeletons mean teeth are the primary hard structures that preserve in the fossil record. Analysis of 1,200 tooth samples across roughly 30 species within a threatened genus, including bull sharks and oceanic white tips, shows species with the most unique tooth characteristics and specialized feeding habits face higher extinction risk. Global overfishing exerts the greatest pressure on these shark populations. Continued losses could concentrate communities toward common generalists while specialists disappear, with unclear but potentially severe ecosystem consequences.
Read at ABC7 San Francisco
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