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]

"Odontodes" redirects here. For the genus of moth, see Odontodes (moth).

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: You'd need rails or something all the way across the Atlantic.
gollark: Oh, and possible new transport thing for the ultrarich: suborbital rocket to a different continent.
gollark: That sounds very cool if quite possibly impractical.
gollark: There aren't that many alternatives.
gollark: Personally, my suggested climate-change-handling policies:- massively scale up nuclear fission power, it's just great in most ways- invest in better rail infrastructure - maglevs are extremely cool™ and fast™ and could maybe partly replace planes?- electric cars could be rented from a local "pool" for intra-city transport, which would save a lot of cost on batteries- increase grid interconnectivity so renewables might be less spotty- impose taxes on particularly badly polluting things- do research into geoengineering things which can keep the temperature from going up as much- increase standards for reparability; we lose so many resources to randomly throwing stuff away because they're designed with planned obsolecence- a very specific thing related to that bit above there - PoE/other low-voltage power grids in homes, since centralizing all the AC→DC conversion circuitry could improve efficiency, lower costs of end-user devices, and make LED lightbulbs less likely to fail (currently some of them include dirt-cheap PSUs which have all *kinds* of problems)

See also
  • Dermal denticle

References
  1. "Paleos Vertebrates: Glossary". Archived from the original on 2006-06-22. Retrieved 2006-05-21.
  2. "Evolution of development of the vertebrate dermal and oral skeletons: Unraveling concepts, regulatory theories, and homologies". Paleobiology. 2002.
  3. "Sexual Dimorphism of the "Zebra Pleco" Hypancistrus zebra". Archived from the original on 2006-05-16. Retrieved 2006-05-22.
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