The Evolution of Teeth

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2019

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss theories about the origins of teeth in vertebrates, and what we can learn from sharks in particular and their ancestors. Great white sharks can produce up to 100,000 teeth in their lifetimes. For humans, it is closer to a mere 50 and most of those have to last from childhood. Looking back half a billion years, though, the ancestors of sharks and humans had no teeth in their mouths at all, nor jaws. They were armoured fish, sucking in their food. The theory is that either their tooth-like scales began to appear in mouths as teeth, or some of their taste buds became harder. If we knew more about that, and why sharks can regenerate their teeth, then we might learn how humans could grow new teeth in later lives. With Gareth Fraser Assistant Professor in Biology at the University of Florida Zerina Johanson Merit Researcher in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum and Philip Donoghue Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Bristol Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:47.0	Hello great white sharks can produce about a hundred thousand new teeth
0:51.3	throughout their lifetime. For humans it's closer to a mere 50, and most of those
0:55.9	after last from childhood. Looking back half a billion years, though, the ancestors of sharks
1:00.9	and humans had no teeth in their mouths at all, nor jaws.
1:05.0	There were armoured fish sucking in their food.
1:07.9	At some point, either their almond scales seeded teeth or their taste buds did and if we knew more about that and
1:14.1	why sharks can regenerate their teeth then we might learn how to grow new teeth
1:18.4	ourselves in our later lives. With me to discuss the evolution of teeth, I Phil Donahue, Professor of
1:24.8	Peliobiology at the University of Bristol, Zarena Johanson, Merit
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