The Vertebrate Skeleton

A dogfish’s teeth are, in essence, scales that have found their way into its mouth. In Sidney H. Reynolds’s account, the boundary between a tooth and the armor on a fish’s skin grows strangely thin.

Writing in the late nineteenth century, Reynolds begins with a deceptively simple question: what counts as a skeleton? He follows the answer through the vertebrate body, from external coverings such as feathers, claws and scales to the bones hidden within. Along the way, teeth become a puzzle of their own, built from different tissues and shaped for different ways of life. The book moves from general principles toward the skeletons of particular animals, tracing how structure, development and function meet. If a tooth can be understood as a modified scale, what other familiar parts of an animal’s body conceal an unexpected origin?

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