Question 1

How do you say Helicoprion?

Accepted Answer

Helicoprion is pronounced hel-ih-koh-PRY-on. The stress lands on the third syllable, so it sounds like you are saying 'hel-ih-koh' and then 'PRY-on' at the end. A helpful trick is to think of it as 'helicopter' minus the 'ter,' plus 'PRY-on' at the end. Once you say it a few times it sticks pretty easily, and it is definitely worth learning because it is one of the coolest creature names in prehistoric science.

Question 2

What does Helicoprion mean?

Accepted Answer

Helicoprion means 'spiral saw' in Greek. The name comes from two Greek words: 'helix,' which means spiral or coil, and 'priōn,' which means saw. Russian paleontologist Alexander Karpinsky chose the name in 1899 because the fossil he found looked exactly like a tightly coiled circular saw blade. It is one of the most perfectly descriptive names in all of paleontology, and it has stayed unchanged for over 125 years.

Question 3

What was the buzzsaw tooth thing on Helicoprion?

Accepted Answer

That buzzsaw was a tooth whorl, a unique structure found only in Helicoprion and a few close relatives. Instead of shedding old teeth like sharks do, Helicoprion kept every tooth it ever grew. As new teeth formed at the front of the lower jaw, older teeth were pushed backward and inward, curling into a tight spiral. A single tooth whorl could contain over 150 individual teeth all coiled together. It sat inside the lower jaw and worked like a rotary blade for slicing through soft prey.

Question 4

Was Helicoprion actually a shark?

Accepted Answer

Helicoprion looked like a shark and was a cartilaginous fish, but it was not a true shark. It belonged to an extinct group called Eugeneodontiformes, which is part of a larger clade called Holocephali. The only living members of Holocephali today are chimaeras, also known as ghost sharks or ratfish, which are deep-sea fish that look nothing like Helicoprion. So the closest living relative of this ancient buzzsaw creature is a weird, floppy-nosed deep-sea fish, not a great white shark.

Question 5

How big was Helicoprion?

Accepted Answer

Helicoprion could reach lengths of around 20 to 25 feet, which is about as long as a large great white shark. It weighed an estimated 1,000 pounds or more. To picture that, imagine an animal as long as an SUV and nearly as heavy as a grand piano cruising through the ancient ocean. It was one of the largest predators in Permian seas, and that spinning tooth whorl made it unlike anything else in the water.

Question 6

Where did Helicoprion live?

Accepted Answer

Helicoprion lived in warm, shallow to open marine seas that covered large parts of what are now the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, and Australia during the Permian period. The fact that fossils have been found on so many different continents tells scientists it was a wide-ranging ocean predator, not a creature limited to one small area. The Idaho Phosphoria Formation in the United States has produced some of the most important Helicoprion specimens ever found.

Question 7

Why did scientists not know where the tooth whorl went for so long?

Accepted Answer

Helicoprion had a skeleton made entirely of cartilage, just like modern sharks and chimaeras. Cartilage almost never fossilizes, so the only part of Helicoprion that usually survived in rock was the hard enamel of the tooth whorl itself. With no skull or jaw bones preserved around it, scientists were left guessing where the whorl fit. For over a century, serious proposals included placing it on the tip of the snout, on a fin, or even on the tail. It was not until a 2013 CT scan of a specimen from Idaho revealed faint impressions of jaw cartilage that the debate was finally settled, proving the whorl sat inside the lower jaw.

Question 8

When did Helicoprion go extinct?

Accepted Answer

Helicoprion survived until roughly 252 to 254 million years ago, right at the boundary of what scientists call the Great Dying, or the end-Permian mass extinction. This was the largest extinction event in Earth's history, wiping out an estimated 96 percent of all marine species. Helicoprion had already been around for at least 35 million years by this point, which means it was an extraordinarily successful animal. It just could not survive the catastrophic environmental collapse that ended the Permian period.

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