For the people that might be thinking "whats so special about teeth?" I think that the teeth are one of the most important things on a skeleton. You can tell the approximate age, the animal's diet, sometimes even diseases or mutations the animal had!
(if you are interested in animal teeth and age of the animal, I wrote about my groundhog skull and how old I think it is here: http://theanimalboneyard.blogspot.ca/2012/10/groundhog-skull.html )
So, a opossum, like a human, is an omnivore. This means they eat anything from fruits to other animals. Since they are omnivores, they have teeth that are specialized to eat multiple types of food. Here are the names of the teeth and other animals that have them.
the opossum has
incisors, like in a horse. in many omnivores, they are adapted for shearing sharply.
canines, like in wolves. they are used primarily for firmly holding food in order to tear it apart.
pre-molars, like in a human. It has properties of both the canines and molars, so food can be transferred from the canines to the premolars and finally to the molars.
molars, like in a cow. Molars are used to grind food.
humans have every type of tooth listed above.
a coyote skull looks like this, notice the teeth near the back of the mouth, they are sharp whilst in a opossum they are flat.
So the opposum has similar teeth to a human, but has canines more like a coyote, or a dog. And the opposum has no carnisials.
The incisors resembles the teeth of a horse or donkey because they have incisors on the maxilla (top jaw) and the mandible (bottom jaw) unlike a deer which only has incisors on the mandible. And, unlike herbivores, opposums do not have a diastema. (gap between teeth, usually between the molars and incisors).
But they do have flat molars, used for grinding like in cows.
the opposum has the same teeth as many animals yet lack others that the same animal has.
and that is why I think the opposum has interesting teeth.
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