ABOVE: For this study, the researchers analyzed teeth from dozens of skeletal remains, including this jaw, which belonged to a young man who lived roughly 200 years ago. Several teeth have extensive calculus covering the tooth crown.
IRINA M. VELSKO
By scraping the teeth of our ancestors and looking at the microbes on them, scientists have sought to reconstruct the lives of ancient hominins, in particular, what type of diseases they faced. But a recent study challenges one of the assumptions in the field: that we can use our knowledge about modern humans’ dental plaque—the sticky biofilm attached to tooth surfaces—to understand its mineralized version, known as dental calculus, frequently found in human fossils.
The results, published July 6 in Microbiome, show that the microbial profiles of plaque and calculus are different, mainly due to the maturation stage of the biofilm found in each substrate, and using remains’ calculus to infer ...
