Development of cyclic shedding teeth from semi-shedding teeth : the inner dental arcade of the stem osteichthyan Lophosteus 

The numerous cushion-shaped tooth-bearing plates attributed to the stem-group osteichthyan Lophosteus superbus, which are argued here to represent the ancient form of inner dental arcade, display a unique and presumably primitive way of tooth shedding by basal hard tissue resorption. They carry regularly spaced, recumbent, gently recurved teeth arranged in transverse tooth files that diverge towards the lingual margin of the cushion. Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction from propagation phase contrast synchrotron microtomography (PPC-SRμCT) reveals remnants of the first-generation teeth embedded in the basal plate that have never been discerned in any taxa. These teeth were shed by semi-basal resorption with the periphery of their bases retained as dentine rings. The rings are highly overlapped, which evidences tooth shedding prior to adding the next first-generation tooth. Later teeth at the same sites underwent cyclical replacing and shedding through basal resorption, producing stacks of buried resorption surfaces separated by bone of attachment. The number and spatial arrangement of resorption surfaces elucidates that basal resorption of replacement teeth had taken place at the older tooth sites before the addition of the youngest first-generation teeth at the lingual margin. Thus the replacement tooth buds cannot have been generated by a single permanent dental lamina, but must have arisen either from successional dental laminae associated with the predecessor teeth, or directly from the dental epithelium of these teeth. The virtual histological dissection of these Late Silurian microfossils broadens our understanding of the development of the gnathostome dental systems and the acquisition of the osteichthyan-type of tooth replacement.