This Bites: Wisdom Teeth Leftovers from Evolution

Ages ago now, the people on this planet made quite a historic anthropological shift, deciding — en masse in some cases — to hunker down and grow crops and herd animals, rather than keep the ramblin' lifestyle to which they had been accustomed. All that running and chasing and rummaging through berry bushes must have been exhausting after awhile.

At any rate, this Agricultural Revolution made it a bit more easy and less life-threatening for humans to stick around the newly settled land, and so they did just that. Now, the one thing that they continued to do was eat, and so they continued to use their teeth to chew and so they, in turn, found slightly different uses for their teeth and jawbones, no longer needing the massive amounts of teeth and huge jaws to rip into the flesh of a freshly killed antelope, lion, or wildebeest. 

This according to a new study by a physical anthropologist out of the University of Kent. This person claims that as humans ate foods that were softer and more processed, their teeth needed to be less and less fierce and sharp and so, during the ages of evolution that followed, got less and less exercise and so, as a whole, became less and less necessary. And as the teeth got used less and less, the jawbones that surrounded those teeth got less and less use and so, over time, got smaller and smaller.

The problem was, though, that the teeth continued to grow, at a similar size, in a space that grew smaller and smaller — which explains why the people of today have wisdom teeth that have no use other than to cause pain until they are removed.

Now, this is certainly not the case with all modern humans. In fact, some people are born without wisdom teeth of any kind. (Whether this affects the amount of wisdom that they gather during their lifetimes is an entirely independent manner.) But many people are born with their wisdom teeth intact, and these teeth mature so much that they are impacted and don't serve any useful purpose anymore. Why? Because the jawbone that previously allowed the teeth access to food has become smaller over time, such that modern humans would be really hard-pressed to use those wisdom teeth for anything at all.

Modern dentists don't much care, though. They're quite happy to continue to extract these vestigial sources of pain, to the tune of several hundred dollars a pop. We don't have a whole lot of records about dentistry in the distant past. Wisdom teeth probably weren't much of an issue in the way we view them now because they were being used. But ancient peoples still would have had tooth pain, of course, because that is something that we have whether we use the teeth or not.

Anyway, the scientific study compared 11 human populations from across the world. Results are in the November 21 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Was Jane Austen Murdered? It's the Wrong Question

What's next — Lit CSI?

A British crime novelist has come out with a book in which she alleges that Jane Austen was murdered. Publicity stunt? Perhaps. It certainly can't hurt sales for the book, which is, after all, a novel.

And even though the book is written by a journalist/criminologist who was the first woman ever to graduate from Queens' College in Cambridge, I can't help wondering whether the sort of analysis that Lindsay Ashford is bringing to this kind of inquiry is a bridge too far.

After all, do we really need to know, after all this time, that Jane Austen died of arsenic poisoning? Would that increase sales of her books? (The answer to that question is probably "Briefly.") Austen is one of those timeless authors whose books continue to sell precisely for the right reasons: They are filled with endearing, enduring characters whose struggles resonate, at least in a few small yet recognizable ways, with the readers of yesterday and today and tomorrow. Do we need to add "murdered" to the description of this revered author?

If the book is that much of a hit and the drumbeat for exhumation is loud enough, we could be in for a repeat of the Zachary Taylor affair or the Tycho Brahe business. (The jury is still out on that second one, by the way.) Was it really necessary to dig these guys up and do more tests on them? Surely they're long dead and we can get on without having to know more and more about their lives (or bodies).

I suspect it is, after all, a publicity stunt. I, for one, don't want to know what really killed Jane Austen. I'm happy for her death to remain mysterious, for the simple reason that I care far more for the words that she wrote and published and that generations since have far and away appreciated. 

Cranial Shield Would Have Put This Ancient Croc A-head of the Game

In the annals of attack animals, this one would have been high on that list, as well as high on the list of animals having a ready defense against other predators.

This one is a 33-foot-long crocodile with a 6.5-foot-long head topped by a bony plate in the form of a shield. Now that's one tough lizard. Scientists have dubbed it "Shieldcroc."

This large-toothed animal dude lived from 93 million to 99 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period, when the planet was populated by other very large crocodiles. (Sounds like the plot for a horror movie.)

The fossil was discovered in what is now Morocco and is now in the Royal Ontario Museum of Canada. The scientists presented their findings at a recent meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, in Las Vegas.

We have just the skeleton at this point in time, of course, so any conclusions presented by paleontologists can be, at best, informed speculation. Still, the speculation is that Shieldcroc had small teeth and weak jaws, which would put it in the class of a fish-eater more than a fierce flesh-tearer.

Also, some scientists think that the shield-like protrusion on top of Shieldcroc's head was not always for battle with others over food or territory but, rather, for battle at times over living arrangements — namely, that the shield, which is thought to have been not so much through-and-through bone as a shell covering tissue packed with blood vessels, which not only helped to regulate body temperature but also served as a means of attracting a mate.

Now that's using your head.