The Anatomical Record sinks its teeth into the world of sabertooths in a new special issue

Abstract

Next to paying taxes, having in-laws move next door, or, for academics, getting a call saying “the Dean wants to see you,” having to go to the dentist is up there with most hated activities. Many of us can still hear in our mind's ear the buzzing sounds of those horrid drills for days after our painful visits to those chairs of pain. No matter how many tanks with cute angel fish, pictures of Greek beaches, or attempts at soothing music, nothing makes a dentist visit, and their (seemingly gleeful) assault on our teeth, bearable. These encounters are for many of us the modern equivalent of the medieval torture of being put on the rack. With apologies to dentists, most of the world really hates teeth!

With the possible exception, that is, of paleontologists and evolutionary biologists. Many of that ilk are as inseparably glued to teeth as accountants are to tax time. For them, every nook and cranny, every related feature of bite force, the nature of masticatory biomechanics and muscle function, or the influence of tooth shape on skull shape, and how all this fits into the evolutionary cosmos, is their perpetual candy store of insatiable delicatibles. While it is hard to pinpoint when the systematic study of teeth began—our ancestors probably first gained interest when one was hit in the mouth with a rock in the Pliocene of Africa and noticed things falling out—much can be traced to the work by the great Richard Owen in Odontography: or, A Treatise on the Comparative Anatomy of the Teeth (1840–1845; see also Turp, Brace, and Alt, 1997). Ever since, it has been an ongoing smorgasbord for any and all fascinated by those enamel-wrapped packages lodged in the mouth (for a glimpse into this world, particularly as it realtes to mammalian and human diet and evolution, see the overview by Ungar (2017)—a brilliant anthropologist from New York City who gave up biting into Pastrami sandwiches for the delicacies of Arkansas!)

While toothophiles find any shard of enamel from our past a possible story, there are some animals that set their collective mouths watering. Indeed, what could be more fascinating to them than examing one of the most curious, complicated, and extraordinary groups to ever show their toothy grins: sabertooths? This group can be seen as the “Holy Grail” for those who seek to explore many facets of the comparative biology of teeth, from internal structure, to masticatory forces and effects on the skull, to societal communication among and between groups, to how this morphology appeared and re-appeared evolutionarily. And this leads us to this month's special, Special Issue: “Long in the Tooth: New Insights into the Functional Morphology of Sabertooths.” The Special Issue has been Guest edited by three most interesting, and accomplished, comparative anatomists: Adam Hartstone-Rose of the Department of Biological Sciences of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina; Tahlia I. Pollock of the Paleobiology Research Group at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom; and Lars Werdelin from the Department of Paleobiology of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, Sweden (Hartstone-Rose et al., 2025, Figures 1 and 2).

As is our custom, a few words of thanks for this dynamic trio who have worked hard to bring depth and breadth to examining the remarkable sabertoothed taxa. First, we offer a hearty welcome to the newcomers to our journal, Tahlia Pollock (Pollock & Anderson, 2025) and Lars Werdelin (Werdelin, 2025). Dr. Pollock, the junior member of the trio, is a relatively recent graduate from the world “down-under” coming from the noted Monash University in beautiful Melbourne, Australia. While each of the group has published occasionally on teeth, Dr. Pollock's focus is the most centered on dentition and related biomechanics. And even early in her career, she has explored the dental world of groups as diverse as whales and a host of carnivores, including Tasmanian devils. “Good on ya,” as they say in her old neck of the woods, and welcome to The Anatomical Record. Joining Dr. Pollock is a scientist who needs little introduction to those of us in the field of comparative and evolutionary anatomy, Professor Lars Werdelin. Professor Werdelin is arguably the most influential carnivore paleontologist of the last several decades, both for his own prodigious science, and all he did to advance his field as a co-Editor-in-Chief of another esteemed journal, the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Indeed, and as most fitting for this special issue, Professor Werdelin has had a sabertooth felid (Dinofelis werdelini) and extinct hyaenid genus (Werdelinus) named in his honor. As they say in JL's home town of Brooklyn, “he ain't chopped liver”! We are honored to have him as part of our Anatomical Record family.

That leaves us to say our thanks to Professor Hartstone-Rose—Adam, as we are much too familiar for formal titles. Adam is a central member of The Anatomical Record family, being among our most productive Associate Editors and prolific contributors. His science overarches many areas, but essentially investigates the intersection of structure and function in muscles and the bone muscle interface. Adam's target populations are largely primates—covering a range of strepsirrhines and platyrrhines—but his comparative net extends throughout mammals and often includes carnivorans and bats. As noted, the output from his laboratory and students (he is a dedicated mentor and no surprise how many students have flocked to his bench) is prodigious, with work appearing in many journals, including the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, PLoS One, FASEB Journal, among others. His group has published frequently with us, including research on teeth, bite force, masticatory muscles, muscle architecture of dietary muscle (e.g., Perry et al., 2011, 2013; Hartstone-Rose et al., 2012; Burrows et al., 2018; Fabre et al., 2018; Hartstone-Rose & Santana, 2018; Deutsch et al., 2019, 2025; Dickinson, Basham, et al., 2019a; Dickinson, Kolli, et al., 2019b; Hartsone-Rose et al., 2018, 2019; Leonard et al., 2019; Dickinson et al., 2024; Dickinson & Hartstone-Rose, 2025; Faillace et al., 2025; Moretti et al., 2025); studies on muscle fiber or on post-cranial muscles (e.g., Boettcher et al., 2019; Dickinson & Hartstone-Rose, 2025; Leischner et al., 2018); and even an interesting foray investigating the ecomorphological correlates of inner and middle ear anatomy within phyllostomid bats (Dickinson et al., 2023). In addition to all the above, Adam has Guest Edited two outstanding Anatomical Record Special Issues that explored the behavioral correlates of muscle functional morphology, one on cranial muscles (Hartstone-Rose & Santana, 2018; Laitman, 2018a; Laitman & Albertine, 2018a); the second on post-cranial muscles (Laitman, 2018b; Laitman & Albertine, 2018b; Marchi & Hartstone-Rose, 2018).

Adam is, hands-down, one of the most interesting individuals you will come across; he is a polymath, a modern version of Leonardo da Vinci. Indeed, like Leonardo, he is a superb artist whose work has even graced our Anatomical Record covers, for example, for this Special Issue as well as for a 2023 issue, “Dinosaurs: New Ideas from Old Bones” (Hartstone-Rose et al., 2023). Like Leonardo, his mind seems always to be working, thinking of new projects and new ways to transmit them. For example, one of his recent, non-anatomical projects consisted of charting how animals behave during the recent solar eclipse; he even published his observations for a teenage audience (Hartstone-Rose & Deutsch, 2025; who even has time to think about this stuff when the grant is probably due?). But, this is Adam, and as JL has written about in a 2018 commentary for one of Adam's Special Issues (Laitman, 2018a), Adam has been an Energizer Bunny since he was a child (JL has known him since he was a little boy running around the halls of the American Museum of Natural History; probably was the one responsible for some broken primate skeletons, but we couldn't prove it!)

So who better than to take on a project looking at one of the most intriguing, still largely unknown, groups of taxa than this trio comprised of a creative thinker from Australia, a master scholar from Sweden, and an energizer-bunny from New York (ok, now in North Carolina)? They have enlisted like-minded, at times, “out-of-the-box” comparative anatomists to re-think the world of sabertooths, broadly speaking. The 15 papers in this Special Issue will take you on a voyage exploring all sorts of hypertrophied teeth among living and extinct taxa going back to Late Triassic cynodonts to in-depth, and novel, insights into the iconic sabertooth felid lineage itself. Questions will be addressed on the underlying nature of the growth processes of hypertrophied dentition, why particular teeth followed this path, with implications for understanding the basic biology of dental and cranial development. And, of course, insightful discussions on the functions of the sabers themselves; so many possibilities, but which are the most likely?

The Anatomical Record is most proud to showcase this extraordinary new view into the enigmatic world of sabertooths. While it may not make you happy about visiting your dentist, it will give you a greater appreciation of what teeth can tell us.

Jeffrey T. Laitman: Conceptualization; writing – original draft; investigation; writing – review and editing. Heather F. Smith: Writing – original draft; writing – review and editing; visualization; validation.