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THERE are six in the line-up. But not one of them is human. Instead, on a laboratory bench stand six dental casts and a large photograph of an ugly-looking bite. Examining them is a forensic odontologist who must decide which, if any, of the sets of teeth made that mark.

Such dental identity parades are more common than you might think. American serial killer Ted Bundy was convicted largely because of a bite he left on one of his victims. In Britain last January, a perfect match between bite marks and a set of disfigured teeth belonging to Edwin Hopkins, a 20-year-old apprentice paint sprayer, helped to convict him of the brutal murder of schoolgirl Naomi Smith.

Nor do the experts only have to deal with bite marks left on a victim’s skin. “People leave bites in food and inanimate objects such as pencils and bottle tops,” says Bernard Sims, an odontologist attached to the department of morbid anatomy at the Royal London Hospital, and one of two consultants to Britain’s Home Office. Sims once identified the driver of a getaway car from the tooth marks left in the plastic end of a car key-and a murderer in Essex from a half-eaten pear left at the scene of his crime.

In the US, Gerald Vale, chief forensic dental consultant for Los Angeles County, was called in to give evidence in the case of the “AIDS bandit”, a robber who threatened his victims with a syringe of blood, allegedly infected with HIV. “At one crime scene he left behind a Styrofoam cup with amazingly detailed bite marks that could be matched…