Real X-rays of person with 81 teeth?

A rumor that circulated in June 2025 claimed to show a collage of two authentic X-rays of a person with 81 teeth. According to many of the posts, the X-rays, which showed a skull from two angles, belonged to an 11-year-old who had a condition called hyperdontia, resulting in many more teeth than the typical 32.

For example, on June 27, a Reddit user posted (archived) the X-rays on the r/interestingasf*** subreddit, receiving more than 67,000 upvotes as of this writing. The post read, "An X-ray of a patient with hyperdontia (the condition of having more teeth than average). Usually adults have 32 teeth. This person had 81."

An x-ray of a patient with hyperdontia (the condition of having more teeth than average). Usually adults have 32 teeth. This person had 81.
byu/Parge-leniss ininterestingasf***

A TinEye search (archived) revealed posts sharing the image of the two X-rays as far back as December 2013. The image has circulated on social media with similar captions ever since.

In 2024 and 2025, internet users posted the image of the X-rays along with additional images from the supposed case on Instagram (archived) and Facebook (archived). The Facebook post contained a link that the poster claimed was the original source of the images. The link led to the paper "Multiple hyperdontia: Report of an unusual case," published in a scientific journal in October 2011.

Although a Google search of "81 teeth X-ray" did not yield stories from any reputable news outlets, it led to the same paper from the Facebook post. The publication that put out the paper, the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, is a peer-reviewed academic journal that is the official publication of the American Association of Orthodontists. The images that circulated in the social media posts were authentic X-rays taken directly from the paper, and as a result, we've rated the claim true.

We reached out to one of the authors of the paper, Robert Willer Farinazzo Vitral, for more information about the X-rays and will update this story if we receive more information.

The paper, written by a group of six authors affiliated with Juiz de Fora Federal University in Brazil, outlines the 11-year-old girl's unusual case:

A black girl, aged 11 years 8 months, came for consultation; radiographs showed 81 teeth: 18 deciduous, 32 permanent, and 31 supernumerary. The main concern initially was to determine whether she was syndromic, and she was referred to a geneticist.

Deciduous teeth are also known as baby teeth, and supernumerary teeth are any extra teeth beyond the normal ones. The patient's medical team ordered the X-rays, more specifically "cone-beam computed tomography," to determine how many extra teeth the patient had and where they were. (The wording of the article makes it appear that at least some of the authors were involved in the patient's case as practitioners, although we have not been able to confirm how many of them or in what capacity.)

The paper indicated that removal of the extra teeth was possible and would be the most expected solution to the issue, though the authors noted it would be difficult in this case. However, it is unclear what happened to the girl, as there were not any follow-ups to the paper that we could find.

For further reading, Snopes previously reported on another story about an X-ray of someone with a large number of extra teeth.