Kathleen Paul, assistant professor of anthropology and director of predental studies, recently co-chaired a 2025 Short Seminar at the School for Advanced Research. The event, titled Achieving a Unified Deciduous Morphology System, brought together 10 dental anthropologists to develop a new system for data collection from deciduous (baby) teeth.

Dental morphology — tooth shape and form — is often used in archaeology and paleoanthropology as a proxy for genetic information when DNA is inaccessible. Most research that utilizes dental morphology focuses on permanent (adult) teeth, with children largely ignored. Yet omitting young individuals from studies limits our understanding of the past through a systematic erasure of children from the human story. The focus of this seminar was to revitalize the study of deciduous (baby) tooth morphology for both academic and real-world application. This required aligning existing trait definitions and data collection guidelines that are scattered across the literature.

Scholars spent three days on SAR's campus in Santa Fe, refining current data collected standards, observing variation in teeth from numerous human populations (including some extinct hominins) and proposing novel trait definitions. SAR provided participants accommodations in their seminar house, as well as meals and campus tours, allowing them to meet without interruption or distraction. The seminar will ultimately result in a data collection manual and edited volume that will help guide dental anthropological practice and expand studies of child dentitions.

Seminar participants (pictured above, listed from bottom center moving clockwise): G. Richard Scott of the University of Nevada, Reno; John Lukacs of the University of Oregon; Heather Edgar of the University of New Mexico; Laresa Dern of Drury University; Christopher Stojanowski of Arizona State University; co-chair Kathleen Paul of the U of A; co-chair Emily Moes of the University of St. Francis; Shara Bailey of New York University; Loren Lease of Youngstown State University; and *not pictured* Miguel Delgado | of the Universidad Nacional de la Plata.