Development of the egg tooth – The tool facilitating hatching of squamates: Lessons from the grass snake Natrix natrix

Most embryos of squamates use their egg tooth to facilitate hatching when their development is completed. After they are out of the shell, this tooth is shed and, in the case, of the grass snake (Natrix natrix), not replaced by a successor teeth. The structure of this transient tooth resembles the development and histology of the regular teeth of vertebrates. Morphological, histological and scanning electron microscopic observations indicated...