Post-mortem changes in human teeth from late upper Palaeolithic/Mesolithic occupants of an English limestone cave

Abstract

Many teeth showed marked natural attrition, certain artificial abrasions and erosive lesions affecting root dentine and exposed crown dentine but not enamel. Sections revealed that up to half the depth of all enamel had been affected by a process simulating subsurface caries, in which all the histological features of enamel caries were reproduced. There was no evidence of vital reactions to the root erosion and it was concluded that both this and the enamel pseudocaries occurred post-mortem as a result of the colonization of the whole surfaces of teeth by acid-generating microorganisms. A different type of damage had been caused by the penetration of dentine from the pulpal aspect by a tunnelling mycelium. Branching tubes once occupied by hyphae reached as far as the enamel-dentine junction although never penetrated enamel. Such tunnelling organisms have been previously reported in human remains as well as in marine shells and fish teeth where the organism has been named Mycelites ossifragus. Evidence presented here suggests that the advance of the mycelium was associated with a preferential loss of dentine collagen.