WIRED

Fossils show how species diversity—and dental diversity—suddenly collapsed 30 million years ago, suggesting a link between climate, diet, and survival.

DORIEN DE VRIES always asks for permission before flying across the world to touch someone else’s teeth. Some of the owners are anxious. Their teeth are fragile—irreplaceable. But de Vries, a paleontologist, sets their minds at ease. She knows how to be extra careful. “It’s exactly the same as dentists’,” she says of the gooey paste she uses to capture the tooth topography. “It sets really quickly and you can peel it off.” She casts the molds and then 3D-scans the replica teeth into digital immortality.

Well, maybe not exactly like a dentist. The teeth De Vries is working with are up to 56 million years old—they once belonged to the mammals of the late Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene Epochs and are now preserved in museum and university collections.

Read the full story in WIRED.