Prickly pufferfish could hold the key to why humans do not continually replace their teeth and may lead to advances in dental therapies.
New research focusing on tooth development in the deadly fish — unchanged through evolution — shows that after the first generation of teeth the programme for continued tooth replacement modifies to form a distinctive and unusual "parrot like" beak.
The study, which is the first time scientists have analysed the development of the fish´s unique beak, also supports the idea that evolution doesn´t make jumps, as its distinctive bite has been modified from a set of genes responsible for tooth development and preserved over 400 million years.
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