Does the Tooth fairy also take chimps teeth?

In the same group as humans, chimps, and the rest of apes have the same dentition pattern, which means all of them have 20 teeth, in the same order across the board. But, as well as humans, apes have  “milk teeth” that are lost when the individual became an adult. 

Contrary to scientists’ beliefs, the age at which a chimpanzee gets its first permanent molar tooth doesn’t predict when the ape will stop being care by their parents and start eating solid foods. The finding could alter the way anthropologists think about how ancient hominid infants matured.

In many primate species, when they start eating solid food the first tooth marks begin to appear. Experts have claim that this is common in chimpanzees and closest humans’ relatives. To support that Harvard University’s Tanya Smith and colleagues photographed the gaping mouths of five wild infant chimpanzees in Uganda between August 2011 and December 2012. Each chimp’s lower first molar emerged by age 3.3, but all of the infants continued to suckle after the tooth erupted — some beyond age 4, the team observed. Due to that, scientists might need to rethink using the presence of the first molar in a hominid fossil as a sign of weaning, the researchers report online January 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many primates are born with teeth already erupted and only great apes and humans typically remain toothless after a month of postnatal life. Indeed, eruption of teeth offers an excellent method to gauge both the matura- tion of individuals and to compare the life histories of species.

The least-known fact that emerged from the literature survey was that many, perhaps most, primates have teeth already emerged at birth and almost all will have erupted teeth within two weeks. But in lumurs’ family all individuals observed to date appear to have teeth erupted at birth. Although day-of-birth records are not yet available at least 16 teeth were emerged in a 9-day-old, so it is highly likely that teeth are present at birth in this species also. 

Summing up, the conclusion is that, as our far cousins, apes have “milk teeth” and receive the visit of the tooth fairy when they are young. 

The secret about the mosquitos

The base of the fourth films in the Jurassic Park series have been destabilized, because scientists have poured cold water on any hopes that dinosaurs can be resurrected in the way they are in the films. 

Since the director Steven Spielberg firstly came up with the idea of making a film in 1993 in which dinosaurs were resurrected from a little peace of DNA from a mosquito fossilized in amber 130 millions years ago, many scientists became sceptic and started to try to find an answers that can prove if this phenomenon could be even possible. So after a lot of efforts, those experts have confirmed that such techniques cannot be done. 

Using highly sensitive DNA sequencing techniques, researchers at the University of Manchester attempted to extract DNA from insects in subfossilised copal, the harden resin from trees that is a precursor of amber. The scientists found they were unable to detect any ancient DNA in the samples they examined, which were between 60 to 10,600 years old. 

However, by the time they try to extract the DNA from amber samples that are millions years do, the possibilities were not so many as they can expect from the films. 

Dr David Penney, an amber expert at the University of Manchester, said: "Intuitively, one might imagine that the complete and rapid engulfment in resin, resulting in almost instantaneous demise, might promote the preservation of DNA in a resin entombed insect, but this appears not to be the case. So, unfortunately, the Jurassic Park scenario must remain in the realms of fiction."

Nevertheless, Universal Pictures has not take the hint and has announced that the next year another film, Jurassic World will be released.