Sweet Tooth

You might think that tooth decay is a modern problem caused by munching on too many sweets, but here’s some evidence showing that dental problems resulting from sugary snacks go back much further. These fossilised molars come from a human-like ape called Dryopithecus carinthiacus, which lived around 12.5 million years ago in an area that’s now part of Austria. The tooth on the right is pretty healthy, but the one on the left has a large hole. This is the oldest known example of tooth decay caused by sugars in the diet, known as dental caries. These holes are typically seen in people who eat a lot of sugar – much more than the amounts found in the diets of modern chimpanzees – so it seems likely that these ancient creatures had a sweet tooth and year-round access to sugar-rich fruits and honey gathered from the lush forests in which they lived.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Jochen Fuss, Gregor Uhlig and Madelaine Böhme
• Department of Geoscience, Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS One, August 2018