how do they identify dentals in forensics?

Question

Do the police just show up at any dentist office and ask them to plug a tooth into the Tooth-Identifier 3000™?

There are thousands of dental offices.
Is there an international tooth database?

In: Biology

Answer 1

It doesn’t work like TV and movies. The police use dentals to *confirm* the identity when they *already have a suspected identity.*

Like if they think a burned body is John Fitzpatrick, the police can go to John Fitzpatrick’s dentist, get his records, and use that to confirm that the body is who they thought it was.

But if they have no idea who a body is, there’s no tooth finder 3000 that can do a reverse lookup, that’s movie magic.