Why do we get wisdom teeth?

There are a couple of possible explanations:

Until the advent of modern dentistry, there was a very good chance that one would have lost multiple teeth by the time the wisdom teeth erupted, so there would have been room in the jaw to accommodate them, and they would have helped close the gaps.

Also, our modern jaws are smaller that those of our ancestors. It’s just one of those bummers of evolution that our dentition didn’t change accordingly. If dentists hadn’t come along, then perhaps natural selection would have eventually weeded out the trait for wisdom teeth, but we’ve found our own technological fix for it so we don’t have to wait for that to happen.

also exactly because we’d have lost some teeth already (see previous post) we’d need the new teeth to keep eating. Don’t forget that lack of teeth was the major cause of death for millions of humans for thousands of generations, since toothless 30-year-olds could not get as much nourishment and died pretty fast.

What Harp said.. when I had mine yanked, they made me watch a video in the dentist’s office. It talked about how our jaws used to be bigger and able to accommodate those last teeth coming in. Evolution is slowly catching up, as there are people now that don’t have them at all.

Age and the will come. From an evolutionary stand point the are residual from when we used to need them. Kind of like an appendix.

Its a government cover-up…

Those of us who have retained our wisdom teeth have also retained our wisdom…

to keep oral surgeons in business!

I was going to say so oral surgeons can get a bigger yacht, but cdwccm just had to give her smartass answer.

@astrochuck: it takes one to know one :)

I needn’t have mine pulled. Muahaha. I guess my genes are “less evolved”.