Papers for Halloween

Is there a better way to spend Halloween than reading papers about a fascinating and scary looking shark? There might be, but I am not going to tell you how to spend your evening. One could spend literally all night reading about Helicoprion; there is seriously that much literature out there on this very interesting shark. I will gladly pick out a few articles for everyone today though. First, I recommend reading both Chorn, et al. 1978 and Eastman 1900 for reviews of the early and more recent reviews of Helicoprion descriptions. Next, I would recommend reading Tapanila, et al. 2013. This study includes a CT image study of the tooth whorl and description of its anatomy and corrected placement in the mouth including a massive illustration of all of the hypothesized placements of the tooth whorl in recorded publications. Lastly, I suggest Ramsay, et al. 2015 which further explores Tapanila, et al.'s hypothesis, CT data, and compares Helicoprion with other genera of shark. This publication also discusses the overall morphology of the shark and how it went about using that tooth whorl in its daily life.