the.com/teeth
thirty-two tiny boulders that outlive the rest of you by centuries
means The hard, white, bony structures set in your jaws, used for biting, chewing, and the occasional menacing grin.
from The plural of "tooth," from Old English "tōþ," with that vowel-shifting plural (tooth/teeth) inherited from ancient Germanic. It traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root "*dent-" / "*h₃dónts," which also gnaws its way into Latin "dens" (giving us dental and dentist) and Greek "odous" — making your teeth distant cousins of the dentist who fixes them.
- hardest stuff
- enamel beats every other tissue in your body
- no repairs
- the only part of you that can't heal itself
- fossil gold
- survive millennia, telling archaeologists your whole diet
- baby stash
- adult teeth wait hidden in the skull from birth
- unique print
- your bite identifies you like a fingerprint
lucy's teeth — 3.2 million year old hominin skeleton from ethiopia, showing evolution of human dentition
mike tyson's bite — bit off evander holyfield's ear in 1997, one of sports' most infamous dental incidents
great white shark teeth — replaced continuously throughout life, with up to 3,000 serrated teeth at any time for cutting through flesh