Dental records

[abstibus]

I am a fan of detective stories, but something has always puzzled me. If the police want to establish the identity of a dead person from dental records, how do they do this? Do they have to circulate every dentist? Does this ever really happen?

[Peter Pedant]

It is not so much that every tooth is different
but that the pattern of fillings and gaps is pretty singular.

Also if there are dental X rays - which in todays world, I think everyone has had one - then they are specific for that person's jaw.

and yes you need the persons dentist
so you ned a good idea of who he is in the first place.

[Archburner]

Sure.Expect a hearse to turn up with a police car and a mould of the corpe's teeth and say to you "Do recognise these teeth"

[WoWo]

Yes it does happen, however as Peter said you need to have some idea of who the person is.

It's only really used when the body has suffered from such trauma that visual identification is not possible, that could either be due to fire damage, decay or external damage.

Normally in those cases all the police have to go on are bones and teeth, the bones will identify the sex and likely age of the person but nothing more (unless they have a specific indicator like a break).

The usual course of action would be to establish who the likely victim was based on location, time of death and a list of relevant missing persons, then checking their dental records for a match.