Pop quiz! What do you think had the second strongest bite force of anything ever? (The first strongest is T.rex, if you're curious.) If you're like me before I took a Paleontology course, you probably guessed some sort of dinosaur (maybe T.rex's cousin???). Which would be a good guess, but also completely wrong XD The correct answer is Dunkleosteus (which is super fun to say, by the way), a huge jawed fishy boi from the Devonian period. And I think Dunkleosteus is cool so I'm just here to spread Dunkleosteus propaganda. (And no, I did not know how to spell that properly before I wrote this blog post and I still don't... praise the copy paste function XD) Dunkleosteus facts: -Dunkleosteus actually didn't have teeth despite having the second strongest bite force... instead, their jawbones were super sharp! Which was good for eating stuff like prehistoric crabs and fish.
-We only ever find their heads fossilized because the head was covered with largy bony plates (probably some sort of armour), while the rest of the body was too squishy to make good fossil rock.
-There's one on display in the UofA Paleontology Museum! It's pretty cool. (And if you can't go in person, there's a virtual tour too!)
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