Meeting: Catalysis Meeting
EVOLUTION OF HUMAN TEETH AND JAWS: IMPLICATIONS FOR DENTISTRY AND ORTHODONTICS
| Date | 28-Mar-2012 ~ 30-Mar-2012 |
| Project | EVOLUTION OF HUMAN TEETH AND JAWS: IMPLICATIONS FOR DENTISTRY AND ORTHODONTICS |
| Summary | Dental caries, periodontal disease, hypoplasia, malocclusion, and impaction pose serious challenges for dentists, orthodontists, and oral surgeons. But paleontologists and bioarcheologists have found these dentognathic pathologies to be rare in traditional foragers, early human populations, and our fossil hominin forebears. The proposed NESCent Catalysis meeting will bring together evolutionary biologists, paleopathologists, biomechanists, dental researchers, food scientists, and clinicians to explore the idea that many of our dental and orthodontic problems relate to a discordance between the chemical and physical properties of our foods today and those to which our teeth and jaws evolved. The meeting will be organized around four themes: 1) evolution of the human dentognathic complex; 2) an historical perspective on dentognathic pathologies; 3) food and the oral environment; and 4) approaches to integrating evolutionary theory and clinical practice. Experts will review the “state of the science” for each theme, with time for discussion and planning of future collaborative research. Participants will be selected to represent a broad range of research and clinical interests, a diversity of backgrounds, and a variety of career stages, from emerging scientists to well-established scholars. The goal of this meeting is to catalyze the development of Evolutionary Dentistry, a discipline focused on the oral environments of our ancestors, and how an improved understanding of them can inform clinical dental and orthodontic practice. |
