Fossil profile: Krapina 49 maxilla
Shovel-shaped incisors are a striking anatomical variant in many living people. The upper incisors of most people are gently curved or straight across, and t...
All posts tagged with teeth
Notable: The enamel-dentine junction of surviving Zhoukoudian teeth
Notable paper: Zanolli, C., Pan, L., Dumoncel, J., Kullmer, O., Kundrat, M., Liu, W., … & Tuniz, C. (2018). Inner tooth morphology of Homo erectus from ...
Link: A historic mystery about blue specks on teeth
A new article in The Atlantic by Sarah Zhang looks at some fascinating detective work on ancient teeth by Christina Warriner and Anita Radini: “Why a Medieva...
Testing the sex of ancient individuals from their enamel proteins
A recent paper by Nicolas Stewart and colleagues presents a way to determine the sex of ancient individuals by examining the composition of their tooth ename...
Homo naledi was chipping its teeth amazingly often
I’d like to point everyone to this new article that may give some insight into the diet or behavior of Homo naledi: “Behavioral inferences from the high leve...
Third molar agenesis: a puzzling case of recent human evolution
One of the most obvious cases of recent human evolution is the increasing frequency with which individuals don’t develop third molars, what is called “M3 age...
Link: Looking for rickets in dental histomorphology
Joanna Klein in the New York Times reports on a new study by Lori D’Ortenzio and colleagues examining the lifetime history of rickets in “Old Teeth Tell New...
Link: Fourth molars in an early hominin
I was doing some searching through the abstracts for the upcoming AAPA meetings, and I found that the system gave me abstracts for past meetings as well, so ...
Notable: Synchotron analysis of early hominin teeth
Notable paper: Smith TM, Tafforeau P, Le Cabec A, Bonnin A, Houssaye A, et al. (2015) Dental Ontogeny in Pliocene and Early Pleistocene Hominins. PLoS ONE 10...
Photo: M2-M1-dm2
M2–M1–dm1.
Notable: A tooth from West Turkana
Notable paper: Maddux, Scott C. et al. 2015. A 750,000 year old hominin molar from the site of Nadung’a, West Turkana, Kenya. Journal of Human Evolution (in ...
Wisdom of Mann
Steve Mirsky caught up with Alan Mann for a recent Scientific American 60-second podcast: “Third Molars Illustrate Differential Reproduction”. The result is ...
Tracing teeth troubles with fossil bacteria
Ed Yong has a great account today of some research from Alan Cooper’s lab on the oral microbiome in pre-agricultural and post-agricultural Europeans: “Prehis...
Teeth and teaching
Razib Khan has a short but worthwhile post about dental health and heritability: “The moral measure of bad teeth”.
Calculus microbially
Molecular archaeologist Christina Warinner gave a TED talk and the main ideas are now in a CNN article: “Why your dental plaque is valuable”.
Tooth wear
Teeth have a close association with longevity. Enamel is the hardest substance in the body, but it does break, wear out, and is sometimes attacked by microbe...
Incisors
The incisors are the front teeth. They are basically flat and have a blade-like occlusal surface. Each quadrant has two incisors.
Deciduous teeth
Like most mammals, humans have two sets of teeth. The first set is called the deciduous dentition, but you probably know these as “baby teeth.”
Canines
The canine teeth in humans range from pointy-shaped to incisor-like in shape. There is only one canine in each quadrant, and it is the third tooth just dista...
Wisdom teeth
Most humans have three molars, but many — especially in America — have their third molars (called wisdom teeth) extracted. Some people do not develop third m...
Premolars
The premolars are directly distal to (behind) the canines. Generally there are two premolars in each quadrant. Counting backward from the front of the jaw, t...
Premolars in primates
Different kinds of primates have different numbers of premolars in their dentitions. The ancestral number of premolars in primates is three in each quadrant ...
Molars
The most distal teeth are molars. Most humans have three molars, but many — especially in America — have their third molars (called wisdom teeth) extracted. ...
Teeth
Goals:
Incisors
The incisors are the front teeth. They are basically flat and have a blade-like occlusal surface. Each quadrant has two incisors.
Tartar control and Neandertal plant use
Dental plaque is a biofilm made up of bacteria adhering to the enamel surface of the teeth. Plaque is soft but over many days can gradually calcify. The hard...
Ardipithecus challenge explication: the canine-premolar complex
Writing about the Sarmiento-White exchange (Sarmiento 2010; White et al., 2010) a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I had three areas of comment. The mol...
Neanderart
Alan Boyle reports on two new papers in PNAS. The first concerns the dental development of the Lagar Velho skeleton. The second verges on Neandertal art:
Qafzeh teeth like Neandertals
Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg and Donald Reid report on the perikymata spacing of a sample of fourteen anterior teeth from Qafzeh. These are “early modern humans...
Enamelin gene loss in toothless mammals
Jerry Coyne describes a new paper on the accumulation of loss-of-function mutations to ENAM in lineages with tooth reductions: “Dead Genes for Tooth Enamel”.
Quote: Earnest Hooton on the trouble with teeth
Earnest Hooton, on p. 170 of Up From the Ape:
Les Rois revisited, and dental classification of other Aurignacian individuals
I pointed a couple of weeks ago to the Les Rois Neandertal paper by Ramirez Rozzi and colleagues.
Another Aurignacian Neandertal, or just dinner?
I said I was going to do my best to scoop the press this week. How about this piece of undernews: at one of the few early Aurignacian sites to preserve skele...
Frankenteeth on the horizon
Joel Garreau (Radical Evolution) covers the future genetics beat for the Washington Post. In today’s edition, he has an interesting article about tooth regen...
Quote: Darwin on wisdom teeth
Darwin, in The Descent of Man, volume 1, pp. 26-27:
Dental growth in early Homo
Dean and colleagues (2001) present a study of perikymata counts of anterior teeth (incisors and canines) in early humans and australopithecines, compared to...