Dental Terminology

Mammals have teeth of different sizes and shapes, a condition known as heterodonty, allowing different teeth to be specialized for different tasks. These specialized teeth include: Incisors (I) Canine teeth (C) Premolars (P) Molars (M)

the position of all teeth are indicated by numbers ,referring to the position that the tooth holds in tooth row ,thus incisiors can be 1s or 2s (central or lateral). Human canins are all 1s.Premolars can be 3s or 4s (or 1s or 2s for the non-paleontoligically inclined), and molars can be 1s,2s,3s.

When we want to describe a tooth ,we should write like this,for example

"Ldi2" :left deciduous second mandibular incisor

or

"RM1":right permanent first maxillary molar.

Dental formulae are used to indicate the number of each type of tooth for a given species. Because the jaw is bilaterally symetrical, only one half of the jaw is described. The incisors are indicated first, followed by the canine, promolars and molars. The maxillary arcade or upper jaw is listed over the mandibular arcade or lower jaw. this is the dental formula of human:

Deciduous : (upper jaw)2 1 0 2 / (lower jaw)2 1 0 2 = 10
Permanent : (upper jaw)2 1 2 3 / (lower jaw) 2 1 2 3 = 16

when we read a book -specially old ones- we may see some uncommon name of teeth like eye tooth. In human dental anatomy the canine teeth are refered to as the "eyeteeth" and the premolars as the "bicuspids".The third molars of humans are also known as "wisdom teeth".