Why do some herbivorous mammals have hypsodont (high-crowned) molars? Would herbivorous dinosaurs have encountered a similar problem?
What will be an ideal response?
Herbage can be abrasive, both because of the fibrous nature of the vegetation and because of the grit and dust ingested along with the food, so this kind of diet can wear down the teeth rapidly. Mammals are diphyodont, meaning that their permanent teeth have to last a lifetime. Hypsodonty provides more tooth to be worn away and so increases the durability of the dentition. Dinosaurs, being polyphyodont (having multiple sets of teeth during their lifetime), would have had continually replacing teeth and so would not have encountered this problem.
You might also like to view...
The period after an initial stimulus when a neuron is not sensitive to another stimulus is the ________
A) repolarization B) resting period C) absolute refractory period D) depolarization
What is required for filtration to occur?
A) ATP B) solute pumps C) pressure gradient D) protein carriers
When our brains process visual information about objects directly in front of us, they are able to use information that compares signals from the two eyes (steroscopic vision) in order to provide
A. color perception. B. brightness levels. C. depth perception. D. motion detection.
Auditory cells in the superior olivary nucleus receive their input from the
A. cochlear nuclei, and they are involved in localizing the source of a sound. B. thalamus, and they allow us to recognize familiar voices. C. inferior colliculi, and they filter out irrelevant auditory information. D. cochlear nuclei, and they determine the pitch of a sound. E. inferior colliculi, and they are used to relay the information directly to the primary auditory cortex.