Dear Julia: Personal experience showed me that dental malformations in developing permanent dentition are not likely to be genetic.
I had a slight fever during the development of my own upper right I2. As a result, the tooth-bud was damaged, and part could not form enamal or dentine properly. When the permanent tooth emerged, it had a stripe with no enamel and thin dentine down the middle of the outer face of the tooth, which cracked up under bite-force, exposing the pulp. (Yes, it hurt.) Emergency dentistry put a groove of false enamel down the front of the tooth, which I have borne ever since.
This never happened again, and never
happened to any of my family, so I doubt it's faulty genes. My incisor and your sheep's premolar probably suffered what the botanists call fasciation.
Greg Campbell
The Naive Chemist
Hello All,
Has any one ever seen sheep/goat teeth like this before? The P4 appears to have been replaced by a pair of deformed teeth. I am assuming this is a genetic anomaly, but could there be another cause? If anyone has any references to similar cases I would be interested to hear of them.
Many thanks,
Julia
Dr Julia E. M. Cussans
Project Officer (Osteoarchaeology)
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