Saber-toothed anchovy relatives hunted in the sea 50 million years ago
Less pizza topping and more toothy hunter, ancient anchovy kin once had quite the bite. Fossils show that these fish were armed with a mouthful of fearsome teeth. Each of the two newly analyzed specimens sport spiky teeth along the lower jaw and one giant dagger jutting down from the top jaw. Stranger still, the single sabertooth sits off-center. Such chompers suggest that the now-extinct fish were predators, possibly feeding on other fish, scientists report May 13 in Royal Society Open Science. Today’s anchovies feast mostly on plankton. “They have super tiny teeth. They look nothing like these things,” says paleontologist Alessio Capobianco of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The ancient fish were also large compared with their modern relatives, which top out at around 37 centimeters. One of the fossil fish may have stretched nearly a meter long, the researchers estimate. Using CT scans to peer into the fossils, Capobianco and his team discovered shared physical features that tie the ancient fish...