More Dental Discoveries

When it comes to interesting news, teeth can really steal the show. Read on to find out more!

Did you know?

Early humans ate grass! 3.5 million years ago, hominins in the Central African nation of Chad had apparently switched from a fruit- and seed-based diet that was common among these early humans who lived in more forested areas, and instead switched to more grass and sedges. The shift suggests that hominins adapted their diet to living in more open terrain, as our ancestors did at some point, earlier than thought, which means they had begun to consume a broader diet. Read more about it at Huffington Post…

Did you know?

A species of giant plant-loving dinosaurs could eat just about anything! Duck-billed herbivores called hadrosaurids were found world-wide about 65 million to 100 million years ago. They ate a variety of plant matter, including ferns, horsetails, and conifers. These are some tough plants to chew, and many were covered with surfaces so tough they could literally pierce the enamel of their teeth. Yet they persevered, generally ending up with teeth that were ground down much like the teeth of the horses and bison that exist today.

“They were like walking pulp mills — I suspect they could eat any kind of plant they ran into,” said researcher Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee. This information will be useful for discovering how other animal’s chompers work, such as horses. Read more at MSNBC…

Did you know?

The root canals of today may someday become a thing of the past! The development of a nano-sized dental film is showing early promise in allowing dentists to keep teeth “alive” even when a root canal procedure is necessary, rather than leaving them “non-vital” in the mouth. The multi-layered nano film is only 1/50,000th the thickness of a human hair and contains a substance that could help regenerate dental pulp, allowing the inner material of the tooth to grow back, making the tooth vital again. Read more about it at Science Daily…

– Dr. Shannon Norman-Kotre, Ann Arbor Dentist