11/13/2025
Did you know?
American Patriot, Paul Revere, was the first person to identify a body through dental records.
While he’s best known for being the man who warned the colonists that the British were coming during the American Revolution, Paul Revere actually has another claim to fame many are not aware of. He was America’s first Forensic Dentist (also known as a “Dental Odontologist”), a title he earned after being the first man on record to ever positively identify a body using dental records. Revere had worked as a freelance dentist prior to the revolution and specialized in replacing missing teeth. When a close friend of his was killed by the British during the Battle of Bunker Hill and thrown in a mass grave, Revere was able to identify his friend from the dental work he had performed on him.
“Visual identification of the bodies inside was near impossible because they had decomposed. So Revere, the man who crafted the slain officer’s false teeth, was asked to locate Warren’s remains by finding the ivory dentures he crafted and wired to Warren’s jaw. Identification of a person based on their teeth was an unconventional technique in the 18th century. Paul Revere’s use of simple forensic dentistry is described by the National Museum of Health and Medicine as one of the earliest cases of forensic evidence used to identify a fallen American soldier.”
