From the 4th of November, it will be possible to collect at the reception of the National Centre for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) the appointment to participate in the 7th Tooth Fairy Tooth Collection Campaign, which this year is organised by CENIEH, with the collaboration of the "la Caixa" Foundation and the Caja de Burgos Foundation, from the 6th to the 26th of November, from Monday to Friday, in the afternoon (17:00 - 19:00h).

This initiative of the Dental Anthropology Group and the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit (UCC+i) of CENIEH, which began in 2014 in Burgos, has spread throughout Spain, although this year, due to Covid-19, it will only take place in Castilla y León, Andalusia, the Balearic Islands and Madrid, throughout the month of November, coinciding with Science Week and the European Researchers' Night.

In exchange for their donation of teeth, participants in this campaign will receive a gift and a certificate as an assistant to the tooth fairy and the CENIEH Dental Anthropology Group, as well as merchandising from the Casita Museo del Ratón Pérez in Madrid.

"It is very important to indicate how old the donor was when the tooth to be given fell out", say the coordinators of this project, Marina Martínez de Pinillos González, researcher of the Dental Anthropology Group, and Chitina Moreno-Torres R-C, head of the UCC+i.

Unique collection

Thanks to the tooth collection campaigns, the CENIEH has created the Ratón Pérez Collection, a comparative sample of milk teeth of worldwide reference for carrying out research in the paleoanthropological and forensic fields. To date, this collection already has more than 2,500 dental pieces.

The collection has been used in several works published in scientific journals, and there are other works in progress. In this sense, Marina Martínez de Pinillos González stresses the importance of public participation "because without donations we would not be able to carry out this type of research".

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