While some spend thousands getting the perfect smile, researchers have revealed the phenomenon is nothing new.
Is fact, they say, we have pre-mammalian reptiles 300 million years ago to thank for the attractiveness of a perfect set of teeth.
They say these creatures evolved distinct types of teeth to attract a mate.
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A pre-mammalian reptile that lived 259 million years evolved horn-like structures on its upper and lower jaws which led to our canine teeth for ‘sexual display’, researchers concluded.
Mammals, like us, have a set of dentition that are neatly divided into three distinct types of teeth – the incisors at the front of your mouth, the molars in your cheeks, and the canines, that Dracula-type ‘fang’ teeth that separate the molars from the incisors.
The origin of this separation between teeth can be traced back to 300 million years ago, when our ancestors still looked like sprawling reptiles, the pre-mammalian therapsids.
Researchers found the key was Choerosaurus dejageri, a mammal-like reptile that lived 259 million years ago and belonged to the lineage that gave birth to mammals.
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After scanning its head to find out exactly why it has horn-like structures on its upper and lower jaws, the maxilla and mandible, they concluded they evolved for ‘sexual display’.
The creatures had long, sometimes sabre-like canines that was often interpreted as a deadly hunting device.
Currently living species of sabre-toothed animals, such as the piscivorous walrus or the herbivorous deer-like muntiac, use their canines as a display apparatus, to seduce a mate, or to intimidate their kin.
Wits University’s Dr Julien Benoit with the skull of the herbivorous Dinocephalian, which tthe team concluded used its teeth for sexual display.
The large sabre-like canine therefore becomes a sexually selected trait, the team say.
In the new research published in the journal Plos One, palaeontologists of the University of the Witwatersrand (Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI) and School of Anatomical Sciences, Johannesburg, South Africa) and colleagues from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (Grenoble, France), used CT and synchrotron radiation scanning to uncover this mystery.
The scientists revealed that the Choerosaurus evolved his very peculiar ornamented face under sexual pressure.
‘Choerosaurus is known by only one, delicate skull.
‘It is unique since it is the only Eutheriodont to have two symmetrical bosses on its maxilla and mandible,’ says Dr Julien Benoit, a postdoctoral fellow at the ESI at Wits and lead author of the study.
‘In this research, we address the possibility that these cranial bosses were either for intra-specific combat or for sexual display’.
CT scans revealed the skull and cranial bosses of Choerosaurus were too weak for high energy combat.
Mammals, like us, have a set of dentition that are neatly divided into three distinct types of teeth – the incisors at the front of your mouth, the molars in your cheeks, and the canines, that Dracula-type teeth that separates the molars from the incisors.
Additionally, it was highly vascular, which is not compatible for fighting but is more suitable for supporting a colourful and/or sensitive cornified pad, potentially involved in display behaviour.
‘The cranial bosses of Choerosaurus are the first evidence of structures dedicated solely to intraspecific, sexual competition (either low energy fight and/or sexual display) in Eutheriodontia, the group directly ancestral to mammals,’ says Benoit.
‘Whereas few studies have investigated sexual dimorphism and competition in early therapsids, this fossil shows that sexual competition and the associated complex, ritualised behaviour were indeed an important component of therapsid evolution at the very root of the therapsid clade, as far back in the past as 300 million years, hundreds of millions of years before mammals or the more advanced dinosaurs expressed these behaviours.’
Benoit says this finding expends the record of sexually selected traits in pre-mammalian therapsids and suggests that sexual selection may have played a more important role in the origin of mammals than previously thought.
‘This reshapes our understanding of our deep evolutionary root, particularly that of the canine which likely originated as a display organ.’