Why do wisdom teeth have to grow late instead of just growing with our other teeth?

Question

I asked my surgeon before I got mine taken out but his answer was not a clear answer. Seemed to me like he just beat around the bushes.

In: Biology

Answer 1

Teeth can’t grow after they erupted but your bone can still grow. So your jaw is still growing and leaves space for more teeth later on in life. Here is a good article about how bone growth is related to Stress and how our food choices impact our jaw sie: https://theweek.com/articles/711196/evolutionary-reason-why-teeth-are-crooked

Also there is a theory that wisdom teeth pushed gaps together to account for lost teeth early in life but I can’t currently find proof of I remember this correctly.

And last because they are not needed anymore more and more people don’t have any wisdom teeth anymore, so evolution is actually getting rid of them!