Using teeth development to determine age

Name: Date: Everybody has two sets of teeth during their lives. The milk teeth or baby teeth appear soon after birth. These are replaced by permanent teeth, starting from around 6 years of age. This information is often used to establish the approximate age (at death) of skeletal remains of children. On the website, the age at which teeth erupt is given as a range. Using the middle of each range (eg. For upper central incisors a range of 8 12 months is given. The middle of this range is 10 months) as the average age at which each tooth appears, fill in this table (the first few have been done for you as an example. Note that you need to double the number of teeth as there will be one on each side of the mouth (i.e. left and right) appearing at the same time) Age (in months) 0-4 Total number of teeth present 0 Type of teeth to appear (in order of appearance)

None 5-8 0 None 9 - 12 6 Lower central incisor, Upper central incisor, Upper lateral incisor

13 - 16

17 - 20

21 - 24

25 - 28

29 - 32

Now use the information above to draw up a graph (on the next page) showing how many milk teeth an infant should have at different ages. For this type of information you should use a line graph.

Now, use your graph to answer the following questions 1. How many teeth should an 18-month-old baby, on average, have?

2. A 21-month-old baby has some teeth appearing. What type would they be?

3. The skeleton of an infant found under a house had a full set of upper and lower incisors and one pair of upper pre-molar teeth. What should be the estimated age of this infant when it died?