Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1886 — Are We Losing Our Teeth? [ARTICLE]

Are We Losing Our Teeth?

The alternative as to whether man was created or developed can no longer be -raised, now that We are exercising the free use of our reason. Man’s dentition has to be judged from our experience, made in the mammalian group. Hence, first of all, it is a reduced dentition. True, we do not know the definite stages by which it was attained in man, any more than we do in the case of the anthropomorphous and all the other apes of the Old World; but we shall not hesitate to maintain that the ancestors of man possessed a fuller number of teeth, as long as deductions are justified from the observations of facts. Our teeth have decreased in number during the course of our geologicozoolpgical development; we have lost on either side, above and below, two incisors, two premolars, and one molar. By this we transfer ourselves back to those periods from which the jaw of the otocyon has been preserved. Baume, our eminent odontologist, in a recent work which we have repeatedly referred to, has successfully followed and pointed out cases of atavism or reversion in the human jaw, by tracing cases of “surplus” teeth —and certain dental formations met with in the jaws in a large percentage of cases—back to those portions of the jaw in the animal ancestors of man which have disappeared in the course of ages.— Popular Science Monthly.