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Ancient Tooth Shows Oldest Sign Of Dentistry
Thursday, September 20, 2012 22:42
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Italian researchers believe they have discovered the oldest dental filling — a beeswax cap applied to a left canine tooth about 6,500 years ago.
The filling was discovered by chance as Claudio Tuniz, Federico Bernardini and colleagues at the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste used a fossilized jaw bone to test new X-ray imaging equipment.
Found early last century embedded on the wall of a karstic cave near the village of Lonche, in what is now Slovenia, the bone most likely belonged a 24–30-year-old individual.
Now kept in the Natural History Museum of Trieste, Italy, the specimen consists of the left portion of an adult mandible with a canine, two premolars, and the first two molars.
