Why does our teeth look big and wide when we’re young but getting thinner and tall looking when we’re old?
In: Biology
You get your grown up teeth early on. Your skull and body grow into them. You also get more fat in your face and the teeth grow a little straighter.
A normal tooth can usually be seen as having two parts, a “crown” which is the part of the tooth you can see in a person’s mouth, and the “root” which usually sits beneath the gums and within the bone of the jaw.
As a person gets older they are more likely to have at some stage something called “periodontitis” which is when the gums, fibre and bone (or the “periodontium”) around the root becomes inflamed. Over time this causes the periodontium to drop away, leaving more of the root exposed.
As more of the root becomes exposed it gives the impression that the tooth is “longer” and relatively thinner. The tooth hasn’t changed shape – you can just see more of it.
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