page_title: Matheronodon
section_title: Teeth
hierarchical_section_title: Matheronodon / Description / Teeth
caption_attribution_description: English: Figure 2 Reconstruction of the maxillary dentition of Matheronodon provincialis gen. et sp. nov. in lateral view from CT scans of MMS/VBN-02-102.
context_page_description: Matheronodon is a genus of rhabdodontid ornithopod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of France. The genus contains a single species, M. provincialis, which is known from a single maxilla and associated teeth. It was named by Pascal Godefroit and colleagues in 2017. The teeth of Matheronodon are large but few in number. The teeth are also in an unusual arrangement, emerging alternatingly from one of a pair of fused tooth sockets in its mouth. In life, the teeth would have functioned like a pair of scissors, allowing Matheronodon to feed on the tough leaves of monocot plants.
context_section_description: Like Rhabdodon, Zalmoxes, and Mochlodon, the maxillary tooth crowns of Matheronodon are shaped like cleavers. They are unusually large, being up to 5 cm (2.0 in) long. More than these other rhabdodontids, there are at least 25 ridges on the inner surface of each tooth. The ridges are all roughly the same size, and there is no "primary" ridge, identifying Matheronodon as a rhabdodontid. A single wear facet is oriented 60° below the horizontal, like Zalmoxes and Mochlodon. Enamel covers all sides of the teeth, unlike hadrosaurids, being thicker on the inner surface (particularly on the ridges, compared to Edmontosaurus). Also unlike hadrosaurids, the tubular structure of the dentine below the enamel does not appear to vary in orientation. The scratches on the dentine's surface are vertical like Zalmoxes and Mochlodon.
  Even though the maxilla is large, it bears only eight tooth sockets. Zalmoxes has up to 10, and Rhabdodon has 11. The walls separating adjacent sockets appear to have been resorbed such that the sockets have fused into four pairs, which is not known in either Rhabdodon or Zalmoxes. Only one functional tooth would have been present in each pair at any time. From the preserved replacement teeth, it appears that tooth replacement progressed from the back to the front of the jaw, with teeth alternatingly emerging from the front and rear sockets in each pair. The tooth of each front socket would have overlapped those from the rear socket, due to the size of the crowns.
  Unlike the teeth of the maxilla, the teeth of the lower jaw are leaf-shaped, and bear a primary ridge displaced backwards from the center of the crown. However, they are also large. The subsidiary ridges flanking the primary ridge are also more numerous than Rhabdodon or Mochlodon, with there being at least 12 on each side. These ridges stretch to the bottom edge of the crown, instead of stopping short as in Mochlodon.
caption: Reconstruction of the teeth in the maxilla
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