Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body

by Neil Shubin

One of the joys of being a scientist is that the natural world has the power to amaze and surprise. Here, in ostracoderms, an obscure group of ancient jawless fish, lies a prime example. Ostracoderms are among the earliest creatures with bony heads. Cut the bone of the skull open, embed it in plastic, pop it under the microscope, and you do not find just any old tissue structure; rather, you find virtually the same structure as in our teeth. There is a layer of enamel and even a layer of pulp. The whole shield is made up of thousands of small teeth fused together. This bony skull—one of the earliest in the fossil record—is made entirely of little teeth. Teeth originally arose to bite creatures; later, a version of teeth was used in a new way to protect them.