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Trends in Ecology and Evolution - From snout to beak: the loss of teeth in birds
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Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 26, Issue 12, 663-673, 05 October 2011

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2011.09.004

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Review


From snout to beak: the loss of teeth in birds

Antoine Louchart  and Laurent Viriot

Team ‘Evo-devo of vertebrate dentition’, Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon, CNRS, UMR 5242, ENS de Lyon, Université de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 allée d’Italie, 69364 Lyon Cedex 07, France



Abstract

All living birds are toothless, constituting by far the most diverse toothless vertebrate clade, and are striking examples of evolutionary success following tooth loss. In recent years, an unprecedented number of Mesozoic birds have been described, illustrating the evolution of dentition reductions. Simultaneously, major advances in experimental embryology have yielded new results concerning avian edentulism. Reviewing these lines of evidence, we propose hypotheses for its causes, with a prominent role for the horny beak during development. A horny beak and a muscular gizzard functionally ‘replaced’ dentition for food acquisition and processing, respectively. Together with edentulism itself, these features and others contributed to the later success of birds, as a result of their high performance or additional functionality working in concert in these complex organisms.