{"id":3279,"date":"2016-11-16T09:01:15","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T17:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/?p=3279"},"modified":"2016-11-16T09:01:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T17:01:15","slug":"gigantic-spike-toothed-salmon-swam-in-california-rivers-5m-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/?p=3279","title":{"rendered":"Gigantic Spike-Toothed Salmon Swam In California Rivers 5M Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At 400 pounds and 8 feet long, this salmon would be good eating\u2014if only it wasn\u2019t extinct. <em>Oncorhynchus rastrosus,<\/em> the giant spike-toothed salmon, lived in California for around 7 million years, going extinct 5 million years ago. This monster\u00a0salmon, which is closely related to modern Pacific salmon and actually a member of the same genus, luckily left behind clues about its life and behaviors in its fossil remains. New research by paleontologist Julia Sankey at California State University Stanislaus and colleagues in <a href=\"http:\/\/escholarship.org\/uc\/item\/84g0595b#page-1\" target=\"_blank\"><em>PaleoBios<\/em><\/a>gets to the bottom of how this behemoth lived and bred.<\/p>\n<p>Spike-teeth or saber-teeth? When this salmon species was first described, researchers called it a \u201csabertooth salmon\u201d because of the\u00a0long, robust teeth\u00a0on its upper jaw, but actually they\u00a0point outward instead of downward. This makes them more spike-teeth rather than sabers. The teeth were around 1.5 inches long and pointed straight out from the top of the jaw\u2013 likely used\u00a0for breeding, digging and fighting. Living Pacific salmon fight with each other during mating season for the breeding rights to females, but did <em>O. rastrosus<\/em> do the same?<\/p>\n<p>More at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/shaenamontanari\/2016\/11\/16\/gigantic-spike-toothed-salmon-swam-in-california-rivers-5-million-years-ago\/#4150fd9d3cd4\">Forbes.com<\/a> &gt;&gt;&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At 400 pounds and 8 feet long, this salmon would be good eating\u2014if only it wasn\u2019t extinct. Oncorhynchus rastrosus, the giant spike-toothed salmon, lived in California for around 7 million years, going extinct 5 million years ago. This monster\u00a0salmon, which is closely related to modern Pacific salmon and actually a member of the same genus, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/?p=3279\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Gigantic Spike-Toothed Salmon Swam In California Rivers 5M Years Ago<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28,13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fish","category-history","category-salmon","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3280,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279\/revisions\/3280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}