Female Vanity in the Early Modern Period: Evidence from the Science Based Reassessment of a Supposed Merovingian Dental Appliance.

Musée de la Cour d'Or, Metz, France, possesses a female skull bearing a gold wire dental appliance claimed in a 1934 article on the history of dental prosthetics to be 'probably' Merovingian in origin. Inquiries in 2017 revealed current museum curators were unaware of this claim but were skeptical of such dating suggesting scientific analysis might provide clarity. Carbon dating of a tooth from the skull was carried out placing the artifact in the mid seventeenth-late eighteenth centuries while Metz historical records reveal the find site was occupied by a convent of nuns for most of C14 dated period.

Female Vanity in the Early Modern Period: Evidence from the Science Based Reassessment of a Supposed Merovingian Dental Appliance.

Musée de la Cour d'Or, Metz, France, possesses a female skull bearing a gold wire dental appliance claimed in a 1934 article on the history of dental prosthetics to be 'probably' Merovingian in origin. Inquiries in 2017 revealed current museum curators were unaware of this claim but were skeptical of such dating, suggesting scientific analysis might provide clarity. Carbon dating of a tooth from the skull was performed placing the artifact in the mid seventeenth-late eighteenth centuries, while Metz historical records reveal the find site was occupied by a convent of nuns for most of C14 dated period.

Replication of Ancient Egyptian Oral Surgical Procedures Using Stone and Bronze Hand Drills.

For over a hundred years researchers have disputed whether ancient Egyptians performed the oral surgical procedure of drilling holes in jaws, presumably in an attempt to relieve pressure and pain due to periapical infections. To date (although it has been indirectly suggested) there have been no published attempts to reproduce the disputed holes identified in the Egyptian mandibles with tools fabricated from stone and bronze, the materials that were available to ancient Egyptian artisans. This paper presents an abbreviated assessment of oral surgery in ancient Egypt regarding these procedures, with an attempt to reproduce these procedures on fresh pig and embalmed cadaver jaws as proxies for vital human bone, using hand drills that were fabricated of bronze and chet.

Could direct killing by larger dingoes have caused the extinction of the thylacine from mainland Australia?

Invasive predators can impose strong selection pressure on species that evolved in their absence and drive species to extinction. Interactions between coexisting predators may be particularly strong, as larger predators frequently kill smaller predators and suppress their abundances. Until 3500 years ago the marsupial thylacine was Australia's largest predator.