Dean Esmay has been told
>that the Inuit usually have the shovel shaped incisors and that
>Christie Turner has done some work on that.  Apparently this type of tooth
>turns up in people whose ancestors were from NE Asia, and they are
>considered diagnostic of these human type by some.

According to Mayhall [1],
"The frequency of the occurence of shovel-shaped incisors is generally held
to be greatest in Mongoloid populations and lower in other groups. ... In
general, populations native to Asia and North America have the deepest
lingual fossae (larger than 0.9 mm), South Americans having intermediate
depths (0.5-1.0 mm) and Europeans the shallowest (0.3-0.7 mm). If only the
larger expressions (shovel and semishovel) are included, one can generalize
and show that North and South American natives demonstrate an occurence of
70%-95%, Asians about the same as the Amerindians, Melanesians
approximately 6%-20%, Australian Aborigines about 60%-90%, Europeans 5%-50%
and Teso and Bantu from Africa between 10% and 20% [2]. In North America,
Indians and Inuit have about the same occurence of the trait, but the
Indians have the larger expressions [3].

In his review, Mayhall states that "the use of dental morphological traits
such as Carabelli's trait, shovel-shaped incisors, molar cusps and groove
patterns, and protostyloid continues to be valuable in general population
identification and comparison", although he is oviously concerned about the
lack of standardization of techniques [1].

1   Mayhall JT. Techniques for the Study of Dental Morphology. In: Saunders
SR, Katzenberg MA. Skeletal Biology of Past peoples: Research Methods.
Wiley-Liss 1992, 59-78:
2   Mizoguchi Y. Shovelling: A statistical analysis of its morphology. Univ
Tokyo Bull 1985; 26: 1-176.
3   Mayhall JT. Dental morphology of Indians and Eskimos: Its relationship
to the prevention and treatment of caries. J Can Dent Assoc 1972; 38: 152-4.

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Staffan Lindeberg M.D. Ph.D. Dept of Community Health Sciences, Lund
University, Mailing address: Primary Health Care Centre, Sjobo, S-22738
Sweden, +46 416 28140, Fax +46 416 18395 <[log in to unmask]>
http://www.panix.com/~paleodiet/lindeberg/
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