Talon cusp in a deciduous upper incisor from a medieval Portuguese child

Abstract

Talon cusp is a rare developmental anomaly in deciduous and permanent dentition. This paper reports a case of talon cusp affecting the deciduous maxillary left incisor from a Portuguese child who died more than 680 years ago. Metric analysis suggests that the affected tooth is a double tooth. The possible co-existence of these two anomalies in the deciduous dentition, although clinically rare, represents the second archaeological case reported.

Labial canine talon cusp from the Early Holocene site of Gobero, central Sahara Desert, Niger

“…In conclusion, while talon cusps are not as rare as is often suggested (Meon, 1991;Silva & Subtil, 2009), labial talon cusps are rare. There are no previously reported cases of labial talon cusp in a mandibular canine and the dental condition, expressed in any form, is rarely reported from the African continent.…”

“…Hattab et al (1996: p. 368) broadened this definition to include 'accessory cusplike structure [s] projecting from the cingulum area or cementoenamel junction of the maxillary or mandibular anterior teeth in both the primary and permanent dentitions'. A number of recent publications on talon cusp utilise derivations of Hattab et al's (1996) definition, suggesting it has become the standard (see Halcrow & Tayles, 2008;Lukacs & Kuswandari, 2009;Pomeroy, 2009;Silva & Subtil, 2009). A further complication in the classification of talon cusp is whether features occurring on the lingual and labial surfaces are related anomalies and should therefore be subsumed under a single term.…”

“…This is particularly true for the labial form of expression. While true form, fully differentiated talon cusps are easily identified and well documented in the literature (such as Davis & Brook, 1986;Segura & Jiménez-Rubio, 1999;Mays, 2005;Sumer & Zengin, 2005;Karjodkar & Gupta, 2007;Halcrow & Tayles, 2008;Lukacs & Kuswandari, 2009;Silva & Subtil, 2009), variation along the spectrum of expression creates considerable confusion in scoring methodology (Hattab et al, 1995;Llena-Puy & Forner-Navarro, 2005;Halcrow & Tayles, 2008). For example, Hattab et al (1996) developed a standardised scoring system for classifying the morphological variation in the lingual form of talon cusp, ranging from a well defined projection that extends from the cingulum to more than half the distance to the incisal margin (type 1), to a well defined projection that extends less than half the distance to the incisal edge (type 2), to a trace expression that is nothing more than an enlarged cingulum (type 3).…”

“…21: 391-406 (2011 odontomes (Natkin et al, 1983); peg-shaped incisors (Mellor & Ripa, 1970;Mader, 1981); and shovelshaped incisors (Dayal et al, 1980;Davis & Brook, 1986;Acs et al, 1992;Hattab et al, 1995;Al-Omari et al, 1999;Lorena et al, 2003;Sharma, 2006). Recent research has highlighted the co-occurrence of talon cusp and fusion-the joining of two adjacent tooth germs to form a single large tooth- (Hasiakos et al, 1986;Taloumis & Nishimura, 1989), geminationwhen a single tooth germ attempts to form two teeth- (Cullen & Pangrazio-Culbersh, 1985;Al-Omari et al, 1999;Hattab & Hazza'a, 2001;Cubukcu et al, 2006;Gü ndü z & Açikgõ z, 2006;Agnihotri et al, 2007), and double tooth-the preferred designation when differential diagnosis between fusion and gemination is not possible-in the same dental element of the permanent (Lomçali et al, 1994;Li, 2002;Mayes, 2007;Ekambaram et al, 2008) and deciduous (Mays, 2005;Halcrow & Tayles, 2008;Silva & Subtil, 2009) dentitions.…”

“From the mouth of a child”: dental attributes and health status during childhood in Mesolithic India

“…Variation in deciduous dental morphology has been used to detect biological siblings in mortuary samples (Paul and Stojanowski, 2015). Unique attributes of deciduous dental morphology, such as the talon cusp, have been noted in prehistoric and living Southeast Asians (Lukacs and Kuswandari, 2009;Halcrow and Tayles, 2010), in an archaeological series from Argentina (Pomeroy, 2009), and in medieval Portugal (Silva and Subtil, 2009 Pathological lesions of the deciduous teeth reveal class differences in oral health in early modern Japan (Oyamada et al, 2008). Deciduous enamel hypoplasias, regarded as evidence of disruptions in growth and development, have been reported for Edo Japanese (Yamamoto, 1989) and associated with climate and subsistence change in skeletal series from Mendes, Egypt (Lovell and Whyte, 1999) and Chalcolithic Inamgaon, India (Lukacs and Walimbe, 1998;Lukacs et al, 2001).…”