#dentition

Wolverine with an extra tooth! Could be a retained deciduous incisor, but it's as big as the others.

Erisol For Sprites Zine 2024

My piece for the sprite edition of the Homestuck Bloodline zines. This was while I was computerless, so it was done entirely in Ibis Paint X on my GalaxyTab. Woulda been easier with a pen, but I don't have one so hey. My focus was on getting transparent/glowy effects right to make him look like a gooey ghost, and I think I did a pretty good job if  I do say so myself :)

A case of skulls focusing on dentition

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Thanks for the submission, @lost80smixtape! You've found yourself a lovely little cat jawbone. Could possibly be bobcat depending on your location but it's pretty small and the shape of that canine tooth looks much better for domestic cat. Neat find!

Easiest way too tell cat jaws from canids or other mammals like raccoons is by dentition—cats have only two lower premolars and one lower molar which makes them pretty distinctive. Canids generally have four lower premolars and three molars. Here's a reference shot I took a while back of a coyote lower jaw for comparison:

And raccoons have four lower premolars and two molars. Here's a set of raccoon lower jaws for reference:

Source:  Horses' teeth. Clarke, William H., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Anyone watching a crime show knows how much we can tell about a person through their teeth. But what about animals? How can we translate perfectly-drawn anatomy to character?

Since teeth are used regularly in many species, they wear and change along with the animal’s history. Most animals have adult teeth for life. Some teeth are designed to grow fast enough to compensate for heavy wear, which can be problematic if the environment or diet changes (such as a domestic vs. wild rabbit).

I’m going to focus on species which don’t continually replace teeth, as I haven’t worked with a lot of crocodilians or sharks directly. I’ll need to do a bit more digging before I explore that topic.

Under the Cut (Part 1)

Diet & Dentition

Herbivores

Carnivores

In the future (because I got really tired and I need food)

Maybe an apology for biasing towards feline teeth

Omnivores

Specialized teeth

Wear types

Gum & Tooth Color

Infection & Abscess

Behavioral Impacts

Images of animal skulls and mild dental disease under the cut. Links included to images of severe dental disease.

All good, right?

Well, when it was time for our dentition lab, the TAs looked us straight in the eye, and said that we were going to carve five teeth. Like, EXCUSE US? DID WE HEAR YOU RIGHT????

FIVE TEETH?????

IN TWO HOURS????

One dude even said it took him six days to carve the upper 1st pre molar.

Long story short, I only managed to finish three, and part of the fourth, and I missed up while making two of the teeth that I managed to finish.