# Dental records question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 18, 2002, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dental-records-question/114629 "2002-06-18T01:56:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![insider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@insider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/insider)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2002, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dental-records-question/114629/1 "2002-06-18T01:56:00Z")
When a body is found and they have to identify the remains using dental records, how do they find your dentist? ---
**Author:** ![Ell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@Ell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ell)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2002, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dental-records-question/114629/2 "2002-06-18T02:39:43Z")
When a body is found you can easily deduce what age, sex, weight and height the person was, even if the body is only a skeleton. From that they can narrow down the possibilities tremendously. Next they look at all the people reported missing in that particular county and obtain the dental records of the people that match the description from the families (if they aren’t already on file). My source is _Dead Men Do Tells Tales_ by William R. Maples. An excellent book that I highly recommend you read if you want to learn more about identification methods or some of Dr Maples’ cases. [sub]This book was recommended in the Chandra Levy thread by **SisterCoyote**. Now I recommend it to you.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Rmat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85e7bf/32.png) [@Rmat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rmat)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2002, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dental-records-question/114629/3 "2002-06-18T06:56:38Z")
Dental records are normally used to CONFIRM an identity that is already suspected; a truly “cold hit” (increasingly common with DNA evidence and fingerprints, given the development automated data banks) would be an exceedingly rare event (there being no widely accessible data bank for dental records–yet). ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2002, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dental-records-question/114629/4 "2002-06-18T07:21:52Z")
This question was asked recently, so I’ll close this thread and direct further comment to the earlier thread, [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=117274](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=117274)