The pain of evolution: A big toothache for reptiles
Monday, April 18, 2011 - 09:31
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Our susceptibility to oral infection has some parallels to those of ancient reptiles that evolved to eat a diet incorporating plants in addition to meat. That's according to Robert Reisz from the University of Toronto and his colleagues who found evidence of bone damage due to oral infec-tion in Paleozoic reptiles as they adapted to living on land. Their findings, published online in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften The Nature of Science, predate the previous record for oral and dental disease in a terrestrial vertebrate by nearly 200 million years.