Sabre-toothed salmon: Experts discover giant fish had tusks, not fangs

Researchers have made an interesting discovery about the world's largest ever salmon.

The huge fish - which lived around five million years ago - had been nicknamed the 'sabre-toothed salmon' because of its supposedly large fangs.

Now, using updated fossil scans, experts have discovered it actually had small tusks on the outside of its mouth.

It's thought the salmon used these tusks as tools to help them gulp down as much food as possible from rivers.

Previously, experts thought this salmon had fangs - or long sharp teeth - because the fish appeared to have a huge pair of teeth at the front of its mouth.

This earned it the name spike-tooth salmon, and many people nicknamed it the 'sabre-toothed salmon'.

It was a huge fish that could grow up to 2.5 metres (8.2 feet) long, so it would make sense to assume it would be eating a lot of prey.

Having looked at a new fossil discovered in the past ten years, researchers led by Professor Kerin Claeson in Philadelphia, USA, found that it might not have had spiky teeth after all.

Their research explained that it was more likely that the salmon had a smaller set of tusks, which would sit outside its mouth.

They don't think the salmon used these tusks to attack prey either. It might have used them to protect itself from bigger predators in the river.

The new research suggests that the salmon's so-called "sabres" or very sharp fangs, were pointing sideways out of the fish's mouth, rather than downwards like teeth.

This means they were closer to what we would imagine a warthog or elephant might have, rather than a sabre-toothed tiger.

The researchers suggest that the salmon would have been able to use the tusks to defend itself, instead of using them like teeth to bite and trap its prey in its mouth.