Weird human tooth collecting hobby ???!

Weird human tooth collecting hobby ???

I work as a maintenance employee at a university residence. Yesterday, while fixing a broken bathroom pipe, I came across a plastic bag with roughly 300 human teeth (I'm nor exaggerating, the bag weighed at least a pound) in it, roots and all. At first I though that they must be fake, or from some other animal. But, although I'm no dentist, I know a fair bit about tooth anatomy, and I'm quite sure they were human. Also, a lot of them had cavities and silver amalgam fillings in them. That's enough proof for me.

After the creepiness of the situation passed, I figured that it must have been a dental student's room, or possibly a hockey player who liked to keep 'toothy trophies'.

Are there any dentists out there? How common is this "tooth collecting" business? I think it's completely disgusting. It also appears that someone took the time to thoroughly clean all the teeth, since none of them had any pulp/nerves attached.

Dental students actually need extracted teeth to practice on. That's how they learn how to do root canals and fillings-- on extracted teeth.

I must have gone through 20+ when I was a dental student. We select the appropriate extracted tooth, mount it in the plastic jaw of a mannequin head using a molding compound, then practice doing the root canal or filling on the tooth. An instructor would grade our work.

You don't think we would let dental students loose on real patients without letting them practice on something else first, do you? :-D