They are considered as non replaced decidual teeth (first premolar of horses, [pre]molars of bears, for example. No thorough research seems to have been made on the subject, only observations.
see reference Searle 1960 in Roitberg 1991 and comment on page 94 of the latter paper.
Roitberg 1991 is available at www.eroit.allrital.de
There is, especially in mice: its rudimentary premolars are one of the keystones of odontogenetic research in mammals with some disputes about this topic.
Plus there is Nature publication about rudimentary milk teeth in shrew by the team of Jukka Jernvall (look for Taming of the Shrew Milk Teeth).
There are at least two classic reference, both book chapters, so not as quick to find:
Moss-Salentijn, L. (1978). Vestigial teeth in the rabbit, rat, and mouse: Their relationship to the problem of lacteal dentitions. In: Development, Function, and Evolution of Teeth, P. M. Butler and K. A. Joysey, eds., pp. 13-29, Academic Press, London.
Luckett, W. P. (1993). An ontogenetic assessment of dental homologies in therian mammals. In: Mammal Phylogeny: Mesozoic Differentiation, Multituberculates, Monotremes, Early Eutherians, and Marsupials,F. S. Szalay, M. J. Novacek, and M. C. McKenna, eds., pp. 182-204, Springer-Verlag, New York.
There is also a tradition in dissection and embryology from the past, like Leche, but these two chapters would head you into the literature. I attach Luckett-- haven't found the other on-line yet.....
Cheers, Holly Smith
I have finished my investigation of walrus rudimentary teeth and published article.
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