In past years, surgeons would select bone from a donor site in the patient’s body to graft onto the jawbone in what is known as an autologous graft. Nowadays, surgeons prefer to use a xenograft, which is bone graft material sourced elsewhere – often, cow bone. While the thought of having a cow’s bone grafted into your jaw might make you feel a little uncomfortable, you can rest assured that the harvested bone comes from healthy cattle and undergoes an extensive sterilization process. At the end of this process, all that remains to graft is the bone material’s mineral structure.