-odon — tooth Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓The Greek root odontos gave us not just dinosaur names but also the word orthodontics, the branch of dentistry that straightens teeth, so every time you visit a braces specialist you are using a 2,500-year-old Greek word.
• ✓Iguanodon, named in 1825 by Gideon Mantell, was only the second dinosaur ever formally described by science, and its name directly compares its teeth to those of a modern iguana lizard.
• ✓Dimetrodon, whose name means two-measure tooth, had two distinct types of teeth in the same mouth, which was so unusual for its time that scientists knew instantly it was a specialized predator when they found it in the 1870s.
• ✓The mosasaur Mosasaurus was originally called Mosasaurus hoffmanni in 1829, and the species name honored chemist Martin Hoffman who helped recover the skull, while the tooth-based classification system helped scientists realize it was a giant marine lizard, not a whale.
• ✓Spinosaurus aegyptiacus had teeth so distinctive, long, and conical, completely unlike typical serrated theropod teeth, that its teeth alone helped scientists confirm in 2020 that it was an aquatic predator that hunted fish rather than large land animals.