Tooth attachment in Silesauridae: understanding the ankylo-thecodont ontogenetic phase in the evolution of archosaur thecodonty

• Ano de defesa: 2021
• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Gabriel Mestriner da
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Archosauria; Archosuria; Dental histology; Fixação dentária; Hitologia dentária; Implantação dentária; Silesauridae; Tooth attachment; Tooth implantation
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/59/59139/tde-23062021-211556/

Contrary to the traditional view in which ankylo-thecodonty is recovered as a synapomorphic trait of Silesauridae, new histological data show that it merely represents the last stage of tooth development within the group. Those dinosauromorphs have neither the crocodilian/dinosaur \"permanent gomphosis\" nor the \"rapid ankylosis\" that is plesiomorphic for amniotes. Instead, all sampled silesaurids show \"delayed ankylosis\", a condition in which teeth pass through an initial gomphosis stage followed by final ankylosis. This suggests that, as already documented for synapsids, tooth fixation in Archosauria might have followed a paedomorphic evolutionary pattern, with the crocodile/dinosaur gomphosis representing the maintenance of an early ontogenetic stage, in which the alveolar bone does not calcify the periodontal ligament between the tooth root and the alveolus. \"Delayed ankylosis\" in Silesauridae results in accepting the dinosaur and crocodile \"permanent gomphosis\" as convergently acquired or, less likely, that the silesaurid condition represents a synapomorphic reversal. Moreover, if Silesauridae is nested within Ornitischia, \"permanent gomphosis\" could even be convergent between the two main dinosaurs lineages. In any case, a ankylo-thecodonty to thecodonty one-step transition appears even more as the oversimplification of a much more complex evolutionary history. In fact, characteristics involving tooth attachment must be evaluated in more detail when they are codified in archosaur phylogenies. An important emerging aspect of gomphosis as synapomorphic for dinosaurs, is that it may represent one of the key features that allowed their thriving on Earth for more than 150 million years.