So, why do we lose our baby teeth anyway? I mean, they seem fine for a few years, then they just fall out! Why can’t we just keep the same ones forever? How does this whole tooth-replacement process work?
In: Biology
The jaws of humans grow quite significantly in proportion to the rest of their head. It’s *much* smaller at birth – I’d guess to reduce the overall size of the head to improve the chance of live birth and mother survival. But teeth, being not-quite-bone, doesn’t have the same growth as regular bone. So the evolutionary solution is to have two sets of teeth; one set when the human has very small jaws, and another set that emerges as the jaw continues to grow. The permanent teeth are fully formed adult sizes as they emerge, they just emerge in stages as more jaw space becomes available.
If you take a look at an X-Ray of a child’s skull before their permanent teeth has emerged, or even the skull of a child who passed away, you can see the teeth already fully formed in their skull, just waiting to emerge. It’s a very disturbing image – I have to warn you.
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