Talk:Mandibular third molar

Article merged: See old talk-page here.

Wisdom teeth?
So the maxillary and mandibular third molars are the wisdom teeth, right, or am I missing something? If not, should this be mentioned on this page? Rojomoke 14:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it should be mentioned somewhere. I thought it was, but I will check again. - Dozenist  talk  18:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Maxillary third molars are the wisdom teeth on the top and mandibular thirld molars are on the bottom.

Article rating
I am rating this article as a stub. Though there is some content about nomenclature, there is a lot of information absent, such as all the characteristics of the tooth. I think the importance of the topic is high, considering it is an article specifically about teeth. - Dozenist talk  18:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Wisdom teeth
this article should be merged with Wisdom teeth, they should cover the same things. Gdbanks 03:36, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * If you notice the links in the article, there are articles for all the other teeth, and the naming system of the article follows the proper terminology for the tooth. If anything, I would say Wisdom teeth should be merged into one or both of the third molar articles. Certainly, this article and the maxillary third molar article should not be merged in an article named Wisdom teeth or Wisdom tooth, as that is not the proper term. This would be consistent with WP:MEDMOS. - Dozenist  talk  10:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Done. As a year has passed, and this seems the best solution regarding WP:MOSMED, I have merged the two articles. Pro hib it O ni o ns  (T) 14:01, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Added a notice for the old talk page at the top of this one. --Storkk (talk) 13:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Treatment Controversy
I'm fairly certain this is an opinion, or at least vague as to what "better" means: Although the the third molars are removed as a preventative option in few countries, it is rather better to avoid the pain and the possible trauma resulting from it. and while I agree with it, I think, for the sake of science, it should be changed to something like: Although preventative removal is an option in some countries, the pain and possible trauma resulting from it would seem to be unwarranted by the benefits which are limited or nonexistent according to the Cochrane review. Josephmarty (talk) 20:21, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Vestigiality and variation
I have heard that wisdom teeth were used father back when humans chewed raw plant matter and such. Since most of our food is now cooked and requires much less chewing, wisdom teeth have become unnecessary. Is this true? I also heard that eventually, through evolution humans aren't going to grow these teeth since we have no practical use for them. Just wanted to put it out there and see if there was any real medical articles to corroborate this. -- AS Artimour (talk) 04:31, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

The evolutionary ideas presented in this section are absurd, a typical example of how evolution is still misunderstood, even in scientific publications.

First, an extra tooth to help chew foliage? Of course early man wasn’t a ruminant and didn’t eat "foliage" any more than we do, and an extra tooth would hardly help there anyway. It would take an extra enzyme or two instead. We can’t even fully break down raw carrots --  have to cook them to get their full value, whether you have your wisdom teeth or not.

When exactly was the “earlier times” referred to here? We shouldn’t accept as fact without references that skeletons of pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers show a marked loss of teeth. They had a low-carbohydrate diet compared to later consumers of grains and were apparently tall, strong, and healthy. Bad teeth and stunted bodies followed the development of cities and the agricultural revolution (see Jack Weatherford’s  Savages and Civilization).

If I understand it correctly, the theory of "dental crowding", cited in the second paragraph, posits a mechanism -- stronger than genetics -- connecting diet to tooth size and number. The idea seems to be that softer (cooked) food could have produced dental crowding by preventing the wearing down of tooth size and number over the generations. But nothing in evolution asserts such a mechanism. Evolution doesn’t actively select anything. It has no purpose or goal. It is a passive process driven by random genetic mutation in conjunction with randomly changing environmental conditions, which is all that "natural selection" really means.

As a better reference points out, the distribution of wisdom teeth seems to have a genetic basis. If so, they may not be vestigial at all. Perhaps they bothered at least some Neanderthals as much as they still bother some of us.

I propose that the first two paragraphs be deleted and the section be retitled "Distribution". Eye.earth (talk) 06:55, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Article structure
Far too much stuff at the begining of the article. It needs a brief introdcution and additional sections. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.130.96 (talk) 12:48, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

redirect
Why does "Wisdom Teeth" redirect here, while "wisdom teeth" redirects here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_molar ? --69.148.182.17 (talk) 18:39, 8 April 2009 (UTC)