June 5, 2017 9:08 pm

Tuesday, Natalia Reagan, Patrick Melton, and paleoanthropologist Shara Bailey Explore the Fossils in Your Mouth

Time to talk about teeth! As noted in this week’s episode of StarTalk All-Stars, teeth are the unsung heroes of paleoanthropology, they are gateway to understanding our past.

Primatologist Natalia Reagan is back to host and welcomes first-time comic co-host Patrick Melton along with their special guest, paleoanthropologist Shara Bailey, an expert on teeth, to discuss the cool things we can learn by studying teeth from the fossil record.

You’ll learn about Homo naledi, a new species derived from the genus Homo which Shara recently helped discover in South Africa, and the remineralization of teeth. Plus, why you can’t get as much data from animal teeth, why babies aren’t born with teeth, and much, much more!

There was one thread of conversation I found fascinating. Our panel discussed how crooked teeth are a modern phenomenon, and that’s due to the introduction of agriculture to human civilization. Before farming, early humans had stronger jaws due to the “harder food” based diet. With the introduction of farming and cooking, that created softer food, which resulted in the evolution of smaller jaws, creating crowding in the mouth.

Evolutionary tales like these are great examples of how adaptable species on Earth can be. It’s also cool to think about how the introduction of cooked food might have been a bad thing for early humans. However, in the long run I think I’ll take cooked food and agriculture over the diets of early humans.

You’ll also hear about the technologies helping paleontologists examine the growth line of teeth and the different layers of the tooth without doing any damage to the enamel.

All that, plus, our trio answers some fan-submitted Cosmic Queries about baby teeth, tough teeth, the evolution of the human diet, and more!

Want to talk teeth? Then please join us tomorrow night for The Fossils in Your Mouth, with Natalia Reagan at 7pm EDT right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channels on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, and TuneIn. And if you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Ian Mullen