A person's dental patterns can identify a person as accurately as DNA testing in forensics.

Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) in Spain came to this conclusion after analysing the dental patterns of more than 3,000 people. "There is sufficient dental diversity between people to enable a scientifically-based human identification method to be developed for forensic purposes," said Stella Martde las Heras, professor of legal and forensic medicine at the University of Granada and study leader.

Martin de las Heras and her team carried out a statistical analysis of 3,166 full and partial sets of teeth taken from the databases in the National Surveys of Oral Health of the years 1993, 2000 and 2005.