Which animal has the sharpest teeth? Shout out to the extinct 'chainsaw shark' (Helicoprion) which receives an honourable mention, because it had, what looks like a circular saw jutting out from its bottom jaw.
Terrifying? Yes, but its gnashers were not as piercing as that of another group of extinct beasts, known as the conodonts.
Living from around 500 million to 200 million years ago, the mouths of these soft-bodied, eel-like creatures contained tiny, mineralised tooth-like structures called 'elements'.
With tips just two micrometres across – 1/20th the width of a human hair – not only were conodonts one of the earliest vertebrates to evolve teeth, they're also the sharpest dental structures ever to be measured.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by [Ben Dussan, via email) 'Which animal has the sharpest teeth?'
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