eli5: How do they identify unknown bodies by dental records?
In: Biology
You don’t use dental records to identify. You use them to verify.
Here’s a corpse and some teeth. Who is it? No idea. Can’t tell you.
Here’s a corpse and some teeth. We think it’s John Smith cause that’s his house that burned down. His family has gone to his dentist and asked for his x-ray records and provided us with it. Can you verify that those teeth match John Smith’s dental records?
In many cases do you not. There is not a database of all people’s dental records.
So you need to have a person that is recorded as missing and the deal record collect and available for comparison in some.
The common usage is that it is used to confirm the identity when you can do it by looking but you have know who is likely is or to tell bodies apart if multiple people are dead and can be visually identified.
So it does not work to identify a body where the person has not been reported missing or no detailed record has been collected.
How the identification is done is explained in other posts.
No ones teeth are exactly the same. The shape of your teeth, your bite, and any treatments to your teeth (such as fillings and implants), are kept in your dental records. If you have a probable match for an unidentified body, you can pull up that person’s dental records and compare those with the teeth of the unidentified person. This can be done by inspection and/or by taking postmortem x-rays. If the teeth are a match, then you can identify the person.
Dental records are really important because they provide a very detailed record of bones that are unique to an individual. No matter how decomposed a body is, it’ll probably still have it’s teeth (barring trauma or dismemberment). That’s why your dental records are kept for so long; if you disappear while hiking and they find a skeleton near that spot 10 years later, the easiest way to identify you is your teeth.
As an aside, you can estimate stature/age/sex/ancestry (although the last one is subject to debate — regardless, it’s something used by law enforcement to identify people so it’s worth mentioning) with varying levels of certainty from different post-cranial bones as well, so if a bear eats your head after you fall off that hiking trail you still have a chance at being identified.
Your medical informations are safely stored on a database somewhere (usually at least.)
Among them are the different pictures of your teeth taken from when you needed help from a dentist.
And the way your teeth are arranged is unique. It’s unlikely someone has the exact same. And unlike flesh that easily degrade, making fingerprint or face disappear, teeth can last a while before decomposing. There are also cavities, and other imperfections that show up.
And DNA isn’t always available, if the person disappeared a while back or even legal, as you usually need a warrant (can be different in different countries) to harvest someone’s DNA.
As a result, teeth are usually a safe bet to identify a corpse.
To compare known flaws, defects, etc. Imagine a set of teeth, lets number them 1 through 32. Say you had number 4 knocked out, and number 19 is crooked, and 20 is misshapened as a result. What are the chances someone will have an identical set of teeth? Very low (but not impossible). Things like that. Or “oh, you had a tooth crack here and your dentist made a note and that same crack is on the body”. These can help compare, but sometimes it isn’t enough.
What if someone has never been to the dentist? Do dentists have some sort of database that they use?
Compare skeletal remains to dental records and xrays looking at dental restorations (fillings/crowns/implants/bridges/braces), missing or extra teeth, adult/primary teeth present, tooth morphology (shape).
so teeth are like snowflakes?
It works exactly like fingerprints.
Your teeth are like a fingerprint. No two people are alike.
If someone has a record of your teeth (like an X-ray from your dentist), then they can identify your body with it.
If nobody has a record of your teeth, then they can’t identify your body with it.
Exactly like fingerprints.
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