Tooth Wisdom

Enamel is the hardest structure in our bodies, and with good reason – it must protect our teeth from decades of daily gnashing. Here a high-powered microscope pictures enamel crystals (coloured artificially based on their direction) in neat rows on the surface of human teeth from 40,000 years ago. But enamel didn’t stay so neat. Researchers believe human enamel adapted and evolved to meet a changing diet - the crystal pattern became more 'misorientated', which can improve strength, around the time farming changed our diet to chewy seeds and grains. (top right, 1,550 years ago). Changes in eating habits since then, including the industrial revolution, don’t appear to have evolved our enamel any further, bottom left (750 years ago) compared to bottom right (50 years ago). Creating bioinspired materials based on tooth enamel might take this evolution further, however, adding more irregularity to crystal patterns to boost strength and resilience.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Pupa U. P. A. Gilbert and colleagues
• Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA; School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in Nature, June 2026