Molar microwear textures and the diets of Australopithecus anamensis and Australopithecus afarensis

Many researchers have suggested that Australopithecus anamensis and Australopithecus afarensis were among the earliest hominins to have diets that included hard, brittle items. Here we examine dental microwear textures of these hominins for evidence of this. The molars of three Au. anamensis and 19...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 2010-10, Vol.365 (1556), p.3345-3354
Main Authors: Ungar, Peter S., Scott, Robert S., Grine, Frederick E., Teaford, Mark F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alouatta
Alouatta palliata
Animals
Anisotropy
Australopithecus
Australopithecus afarensis
Australopithecus africanus
Diet
Food
Fossils
Fractals
Hominidae - anatomy & histology
Humans
Microscopy, Confocal
Microscopy, Electron, Scanning
Microwear Textures
Molar
Molar - ultrastructure
Paleodontology - methods
Primates
Specimens
Surface texture
Taxa
Teeth
Theropithecus gelada
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Many researchers have suggested that Australopithecus anamensis and Australopithecus afarensis were among the earliest hominins to have diets that included hard, brittle items. Here we examine dental microwear textures of these hominins for evidence of this. The molars of three Au. anamensis and 19 Au. afarensis specimens examined preserve unobscured antemortem microwear. Microwear textures of these individuals closely resemble those of Paranthropus boisei, having lower complexity values than Australopithecus africanus and especially Paranthropus robustus. The microwear texture complexity values for Au. anamensis and Au. afarensis are similar to those of the grass-eating Theropithecus gelada and folivorous Alouatta palliata and Trachypithecus cristatus. This implies that these Au. anamensis and Au. afarensis individuals did not have diets dominated by hard, brittle foods shortly before their deaths. On the other hand, microwear texture anisotropy values for these taxa are lower on average than those of Theropithecus, Alouatta or Trachypithecus. This suggests that the fossil taxa did not have diets dominated by tough foods either, or if they did that directions of tooth–tooth movement were less constrained than in higher cusped and sharper crested extant primate grass eaters and folivores.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2010.0033