Teeth?

Many years ago an enthusiastic sindonologist decided that he thought he could see teeth on the image on the Shroud of Turin. The earliest report I can find is from Shroud News, of September 1982, relaying an article in the Sidney Daily Telegraph, itself based on something which appeared in the USA a little earlier.

“Dr Giles F. Carter, an archaeological chemist from East Michigan University, has made the claim after a lengthy study of the shroud. ‘The images are not fake,’ Dr Carter said, ‘All scientists who investigated the shroud in 1978 believe the images were not painted, dyed, stained, rubbed or otherwise applied by man.’
Although some researchers say light may have caused the images, Carter believes X-rays are a more likely source because bones and teeth are visible. However the bone images were not formed directly by X-rays travelling through bones because the X-rays would have been too energetic, passing right through the fabric without a trace. A reaction caused chemicals in the dirt and salt to emit soft X-rays which could have made the images of the body on the shroud.”

The idea had legs, and ran, and ran. Claims that all thirty-two teeth, and their roots, are visible, have become commonplace, and in a recent podcast, Gary Habermas said that the Head of Dentistry at Duke University thought they were the clearest he had ever seen. That being so, it should be easy for anybody to mark out exactly where they are, but nobody seems to have been able to do this, in such a way that anybody else can clearly identify them.

Here is the area under discussion, from Shroud 2.0:

It’s extremely difficult to make anything of it at all, so here it is with greatly enhanced contrast:

The thickish, darkish arc across the top is the moustache, and the thinner, more or less horizontal line just above centre is the lower lip. Those who see teeth, however, tend to use the even higher contrast Enrie negatives from 1932 (here horizontally flipped to match the images above):

Now where are the teeth? A few months ago a dentist responded with this:

And here are some teeth spotted by another observer.

And here are some more, from Shroudstory, but I don’t know who drew them.

And here are some submitted by Teddi Pappas.

And here they all are together – flipped horizontally as necessary to give them all the same orientation.

As we can see, what different people “think they see” not only does not coincide with what actually appears on the Shroud, but also does not coincide with other people’s versions. This itself is enough to refute the idea that there is objective evidence of teeth on the Shroud, but there is more.

Whether the teeth are identified as across the moustache area, or across the lower lip area, they are characterised by being in a lighter area rather than a darker one. This is not wholly consistent – some people seem to try to find outlines, for example, which may be light around a darker area, or dark around a lighter area, sometimes both, within the same series of teeth. However, nobody has seen teeth in, say, the two dark right-angled triangles placed symmetrically in the area between the moustache and the lip.

Those who think the teeth, usually coupled to the fingers, look like X-rays are almost always making a fundamental mistake. They only look like X-rays in a negative photo of the Shroud. The bones on an X-ray photograph look white because no X-rays come through them, so do not affect the emulsion of the plate capturing them. The dark area around the bones is where the X-rays impinge on the plate. The actual Shroud has dark areas where the bones are, but not around them or the body. If the Shroud were an X-ray in the normal sense, it would be dark all over, except for where the image blocked the rays, which would be unaffected linen.

This is not, however, what was originally proposed, which was that the teeth and bones emitted the X-rays. In that case, we must ask why the fingers are the only bones mentioned, and not the ribs, collarbones, or feet, or the double bones of the lower limbs, none of which are imaged on the Shroud. Furthermore, as Dr Carter (above) said, with surprising honesty, “the bone images were not formed directly by X-rays travelling through bones because the X-rays would have been too energetic, passing right through the fabric without a trace.” His explanation for their affecting the Shroud, however, is feeble. “A reaction caused chemicals in the dirt and salt to emit soft X-rays which could have made the images of the body on the shroud.”

There are no bones or teeth imaged on the Shroud, and X-rays were not a contributory factor in producing the images.