A friend is going through some dental issues, so we were talking the other day about the history of our teeth. Both of us had trouble in our youth involving baby teeth–mine were very slow to fall out.
It made me appreciate just how brilliant baby teeth are (and their adult counterparts). Think about it: Our bodies come with two sets of teeth for different mouth sizes! How amazing is that?!
But teeth are bones, right? So why are they the only bones that do this? Imagine if your finger bones fell out at a certain age as bigger bones displace them. (Actually, that sounds terrible.)
Perhaps another approach is: Why aren’t teeth like all the other bones? Instead of having baby and adult teeth, why don’t teeth just get slightly bigger over time in proportion with the size of our jaw?
I’m sure I could Google the answer, but sometimes these things are more interesting if left ungoogled.