The Dryopithecus Pattern. Answering the question, "whose tooth is it, anyway"?

When dentists restore a five-cusped lower molar, carving into the amalgam or wax, they recapitulate eons of evolution. As students, dentists are taught to create the particular arrangement of grooves that we call the Dryopithecus Pattern. The configuration, made up of five cusps, forms the basic occlusal pattern of the modern and ancient lower molar in Homo sapiens.