# How, Exactly, Are The Dead Identified By 'Dental Records'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 8, 2022, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143 "2022-05-08T14:04:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/1 "2022-05-08T14:04:25Z")
Do dentists send off xrays to some office in Washington or something? ---
**Author:** ![Staggerlee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/staggerlee/32/3134_2.png) [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/2 "2022-05-08T14:11:29Z")
I expect it’s more the case that a cadaver’s identity is ‘verified’ by dental records, i.e. the police already have an idea of who the dead body is. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/3 "2022-05-08T14:12:58Z")
Straight Dope Staff Report on the subject. > **[How can they identify people from their dental records?](https://www.straightdope.com/21342589/how-can-they-identify-people-from-their-dental-records)** > > A STAFF REPORT FROM THE STRAIGHT DOPE SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/4 "2022-05-08T14:25:32Z")
That report may be a little out of date at this point. I recall reading the FBI was exploring the impact of a Dental Image Repository. This was happening in the 2000’s. I found something on it here: _National Dental Image Repository_ [https://www.americancityandcounty.com/2007/03/18/law-enforcement-online-announces-creation-of-national-dental-image-repository/](https://www.americancityandcounty.com/2007/03/18/law-enforcement-online-announces-creation-of-national-dental-image-repository/) Someone in Law Enforcement might know if it is actually up and running in a useful way. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/5 "2022-05-08T14:26:22Z")
To update the SD staff report, there still is no central registry of dental records. A database with dental records of missing persons exists, but a name is needed to make comparisons with the teeth of a cadaver. > **[How Do Forensic Scientists Use Teeth To Identify People?](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/07/02/how-do-forensic-scientists-use-teeth-to-identify-people/?sh=7c014a57e5f8)** > > How do forensic scientists ID people from their teeth? This question was originally answered on Quora by Zoe-Anne Barcellos. Forensic dentists (now _there’s_ a specialty) make the comparisons. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/6 "2022-05-08T14:50:29Z")
You can rely on dental records because you are getting the tooth and nothing but the tooth. ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/7 "2022-05-08T20:28:26Z")
Robert Benchley, is that you? > **[Read Love Conquers All by Robert C. Benchley, Read free on ReadCentral.com](https://www.readcentral.com/bookchapters.aspx?author=Robert-C-Benchley&book=Love-Conquers-All&id=030)** > > Read CHAPTER XXVII - THE TOOTH, THE WHOLE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH of Love Conquers All by Robert C. Benchley free of charge on ReadCentral. More than 5000 books to choose from. No need to sign-up or to download. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/8 "2022-05-08T21:39:30Z")
The mouth is an evolving picture, so a dental xray is a snapshot at a specific point in time. The day after that they could have had serious work done and their mouth completely changed. What is probably more use is a record of all the work that has been done to a person. Think of your own visit to the dentists across your life. You may have had half a dozen putting things into and taking them out of your mouth over half a century. The combination of work will be fairly distinctive, possibly unique [but try proving that]. When the police find a body that looks like the missing John Smith, they hopefully will know Smith’s most recent dentist and start piecing together whether the dental work matches. If its like my dental record there’s not so many xrays but lots of billing info. And then go back to the previous dentist for the earlier part of the story and hope that they retain records from 20-30-40-50 years ago, if they still operate. As someone said, a forensic dentist would then be the person who competently compares the records to the body. As an aside on why this is so important, even when there is an identification by a next of kin, in the Bali nightclub bombing in 2002 a large number of Indonesians and Australians were killed. A number of Australian families quickly flew to Bali and visually identified their relatives among the casualties. Of the 18 visual identifications nine were incorrect. The assumption they made was ‘my son is a tall fit young man’, but unfortunately that would have described half the nightclub patrons, and were made on badly burnt bodies under incredibly stressful conditions. The high level of misidentification led to changes in the protocols for casualty identification, and showed how important both DNA and dental records were. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/9 "2022-05-08T22:29:19Z")
And then there was this, which led to some changes in military procedures. > **[Arrow Air Flight 1285R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Air_Flight_1285R)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > > • Atmospheric icing (CASB) > Arrow Air Flight 1285R was an international charter flight carrying U.S. Army personnel from Cairo, Egypt, to their home base in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, via Cologne, West Germany, and Gander, Newfoundland. > On the morning of Thursday, 12 December 1985, shortly after takeoff from Gander en route to Fort Campbell, the McDonnell Douglas DC-8 serving the flight stalled, crashed, and burned about half a mile from the runwa... TL : DR - This was a military transport flight, and the personnel had their medical records transported with them on the same flight, making identification much more difficult because the records were heavily damaged, if not outright destroyed. As for dental work changing the way a mouth looks, there is some truth to that, but if somebody has an anomaly in their jawbone (unerupted teeth being an example that comes to mind) that probably won’t change. One example: I remember an episode of “Forensic Files”, or some similar program, where a murder victim’s hands and feet were cut off, and all their teeth pulled out before the body was set on fire (post-mortem, thank heavens) but the murderers, who did know the victim, hadn’t expected their victim to have at least one unerupted tooth, which made identification much easier. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/10 "2022-05-08T22:31:38Z")
This. On a related note, I remember a picture in either “Time” or “Newsweek” of a partially decayed skull during the Bosnian conflict, with the jaws wide open due to rigor mortis, and something like 500 dentists wrote in, in those pre-email days, to let the writers know that this skull had belonged to a child of 9 or 10. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2022, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/11 "2022-05-09T17:58:16Z")
From what I understand, these days the military x-rays soldiers’ teeth before deployment, presumably for identification purposes. That gives them one more way to identify remains- the usual identification tags/clothing labels/etc… then dental x-rays and finally DNA if nothing else suffices. Of course these days we’re not fighting the kinds of wars where this sort of thing comes into play very often. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/12 "2022-05-10T01:15:01Z")
Yes, this was a contributing factor to the US military keeping a dna sample on file, and updating regularly (as well as right before deploying) service member records. Many of those soldiers couldn’t be identified with dental records. (it took six months for my brother to be identified and returned to us) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/13 "2022-05-10T02:44:33Z")
Was your brother on this flight? ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/14 "2022-05-10T03:01:04Z")
I believe the X-rays before deployment was primarily to prevent somebody getting deployed then finding out they needed to get MASSIVE dental work done and they might not be in an area with good dental facilities. At least when I was in the Army they gave you a full medical/dental physical and it was entirely so they didn’t have to send you back home for treatment. The identification is a side-benefit. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/15 "2022-05-10T04:19:07Z")
Yes. Additional characters to satisfy posting requirements ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/16 "2022-05-10T04:24:14Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > The identification is a side-benefit. And, if you’re hand-carrying your entire medical/dental record file, potentially impossible, just like at Gander. A dental record kept back at headquarters, that would be useful for identification. Just like DNA at the DoD central repository is now. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-are-the-dead-identified-by-dental-records/964143/17 "2022-05-10T13:31:39Z")
Fair enough. Either way, they have a relatively up-to-date set of x-rays to compare against if someone gets killed and is difficult enough to identify such that dental records are needed.