Evolution of temporomandibular joint – A review

Abstract

Evolution is a change in gene pool of a population over time. Differences between genomes have anthropological, medical, and forensic implications and applications. Mammals have long been diagnosed from all other vertebrates and from very nearly mammalian animals largely on the basis of their jaw-ear structure but there is an even greater significance to jaw joints in the vertebrate evolution. It highlights the underlying mechanisms through which this basic blue print was renovated to produce certain subsequent divergent mammalian feeding adaptations.

The purpose of this review is to highlight certain mechanisms published in dental literature till date involved in the design of living structure and to show how their mechanisms were implemented in the present adaptation of the human jaw joint.