Dental Anthropology Research Conducted at the School of Dentistry of the Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia) between 2002 and 2021: A Literature Review

In the last 20 years, the Dental Anthropology and Forensic Dentistry Research Group at the Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia) has integrated knowledge from anthropology, dentistry, biolo-gy, paleontology and paleopathology to characterize the dental morphology of living populations in southwestern Colombia. This has been done by studying the frequency and variability of dental morphological features in populations with different ancestries, including Euro-descendants, Afro-descendants and Native Americans. The group has employed strategies such as formative research and the creation of cooperative research networks to publish and disseminate their findings on dental morphology mainly within the Colombian dental clinical context. However, these studies have been limited in their impact on the international anthropological academic community due to a lack of publication in English and refusals from some specialized journals to publish research on contemporary Colombian populations. To address this issue, this article aims to provide a literature review of the research on dental anthropology carried out at the School of Dentistry of the Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia) between 2002 and 2021. Despite the high amount of available information, the results of this scientific research have been difficult to make visible, search, access, and recover.