New fossil reveals the weird ‘tooth cushions’ of an apex predator from 425 million years ago

New fossil reveals the weird ‘tooth cushions’ of an apex predator from 425 million years ago

The ancient fish _Megamastax amblyodus_. Brian Choo, CC BY-NC-NDRoughly 425 million years ago, in the warm seas over what is now southern China, there lived a metre-long bony fish with jaws full of clusters of spiky teeth. Long extinct, this predatory fish (Megamastax amblyodus) was an ancient forerunner of all animals with a skeleton and a backbone alive today – including you and me – and was the world’s oldest known vertebrate apex predator th…