Teeth are important to our lives and well-being, but we tend to take them for granted. Tanya Smith's beautifully illustrated book clearly explains all the fascinating and mostly unappreciated details of our teeth, from the first tiny germ to the full-grown adult tooth. An unexpectedly engrossing and informative read!
Meave Leakey, Professor, Stony Brook University and Turkana Basin Institute
Who would have thought teeth had so much to recount? In her absorbing and authoritative Tales Teeth Tell Tanya Smith lucidly explains the evolutionary, functional, developmental, and pathological records encapsulated in the dentition. Along the way, she constructs an unconventional and sometimes surprising perspective on who we human beings are, and where we came from.
Ian Tattersall, author of The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack: And Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution
Tanya Smith's masterful overview of teeth blends personal narrative with cutting-edge science. Skillfully written and illustrated, her account is accessible and informative, the best available introduction to how and why our teeth reveal so much about our biology.
Tim D. White, Professor of Integrative Biology and Director of the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley
The Tales Teeth Tell is an accessible, personal, often funny and occasionally controversial look into the murk of human evolution...[the book] is chock full of fascinating science, but it's also the personal story of a woman of science immersed in her work.
Shelf Awareness
In a time when people are more interested than ever in where they came from, The Tales Teeth Tell gives readers a way to look beyond a DNA cheek swab for information about their pasts, both recent and deep....By the end of her tooth-centric tour through childhood, the distant past, and modern cultures, Smith will have convinced you that your teeth are time machines.
Massive Science
The Tales Teeth Tell might make you more impressed by what's in your mouth — or put a smile on your face with its weird facts about primate dentistry and the shrinking grins of modern-day humans. The book is written by an academic and has plenty of notes. But it's accessible to science-minded readers.
Washington Post
Biological anthropologist Tanya Smith drills into what disinterred teeth, as “sophisticated time machines”, can tell us about individuals, our species and the deep past. Her study — technically chewy yet thoroughly engaging — examines the human story through dental development, evolution and related behaviour, interlacing vivid anecdotes from her scientific career. The result is a mix of fascinating findings at all scales, from scanning electron microscopy displaying the exquisite geometry of enamel prisms, to toothpick use among hominins some 2 million years ago.
Nature
A mix of fascinating findings at all scales, from scanning electron microscopy displaying the exquisite geometry of enamel prisms, to toothpick use among hominins some 2 million years ago.
Nature
Smith's writing is informative, absorbing, and manages to elegantly cover a wide range of topics.
The Inquisitive Biologist
