Odontode

Odontodes, or dermal teeth, are hard structures found on the external surfaces of animals or near internal openings. They consist of a soft pulp surrounded by dentine and covered by a mineralized substance such as enamel, a structure similar to that of teeth.[1] They generally do not have the same function as teeth, and are not replaced the same way teeth are in most fish.[2] In some animals (notably catfish), the presence or size of odontodes can be used in determining the sex.[3]

The name comes from the Greek "odon" meaning tooth.

Images

A New Species of Hisonotus (Siluriformes, Loricariidae) of the Upper Rı´o Uruguay Basin (see page 7) An article showing scanning electron microscope images of odontodes on a catfish. Author:Adriana E. Aquino, Scott A. Schaefer, Amalia M. Miquelarena. Publisher: The American Museum of Natural History.

gollark: Well, I was considering an option where you could use SQLCipher for data storage instead of SQLite.
gollark: Of course it does. It's important to know how susceptible your document is to frequency analysis if enciphered in certain ways.
gollark: Heavpoot wanted me to track "average letter frequency", and is also my alt sometimes, but that would be bad for performance probably.
gollark: I'm sure you'd like to think so.
gollark: Maybe I'll implement an average word length function in minoteaur's editor, to spite you, then.

See also

  • Dermal denticle

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.