Marina Martínez de Pinillos, a researcher at the Dental Anthropology Group, presented this CENIEH project at the 92nd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists, held in Reno (Nevada).
Marina Martínez de Pinillos, of the Dental Anthropology Group at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), presented the Ratón Pérez Collection (RP Collection) at the 92nd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists (AABA), held in April in Reno (Nevada, United States), in her talk “Employing the power of the Tooth Fairy or Ratón Pérez in developing a community-engaged scientific collection of deciduous teeth”.
During her address, the scientific coordinator of this project explained how the RP Collection has grown since it was started in 2014 with the objective of creating one of the largest reference milk teeth collections in the world. It is practically unique, and currently holds over 4500 pieces from more than 2000 donors aged 2 to 15, thanks to the collaboration of universities and institutions from all over Spain and beyond.
Those attending her presentation displayed great interest in the possibility of accessing this collection, whose potential users, researchers and professionals from physical anthropology, paleontology, odontology and forensics, will be able to gain access either in the center itself or remotely, from anywhere else.
Remote access will become possible via a digitalization database that is planned. A virtual collection of 3D reconstructions is also being created using Micro-Computed Tomography (Micro-CT), and around 800 dental pieces have already been scanned.
“Thanks to the material we receive from donors, we can conduct studies of the external and internal morphology of the enamel and dentin, dental pathologies, and sexual dimorphism, among many examples”, comments Martínez de Pinillos, a postdoctoral researcher on the Tied2Teeth project.