This new, definitive image of Helicoprion debuted last year thanks to the efforts of artist Ray Troll and a team of researchers led by Idaho State University paleontologist Leif Tapanila. A very special fossil – IMNH 37899 – preserved both the upper and lower jaws in a closed position, finally solving the mystery of what the ratfish’s head actually looked like. But determining the exact placement of that vexing spiral was just an initial step.

Paleontologists and artists had often supposed that Helicoprion had upper teeth to pierce slippery cephalopods and squirming fish, but the fossils Tapanila and colleagues examined showed that Helicoprion only had a buzzsaw embedded in