HIGH POINT, N.C., Sept. 6, 2012 – Dr. Mark Teaford, professor of physical therapy at High Point University, recently published three articles in the “American Journal of Physical Anthropology” regarding the diets and teeth of our ancient ancestors.
The first article, “Dental microwear and anthropoid diets,” is an analysis of the world’s most complete database of information relating diet in modern monkeys and apes to microscopic wear patterns on teeth. It was conducted with colleagues Rob Scott from Rutgers University and Peter Ungar from the University of Arkansas.
“This is the type of information that we use to help interpret the results from our studies of fossils,” Teaford says. “If the fossils show the same microscopic wear patterns as the primates with known diets, they might have the same diet.”
The second article, “A dental topographic analysis of chimpanzees,” is an analysis of tooth shape using laser screening. It formed much of the thesis of Zachary Klukkert from CUNY and relied on techniques pioneered by Peter Ungar from the University of Arkansas.
“If a particular tooth shape is important for processing foods, then that shape might become more common in the species through time via evolution and natural selection,” Teaford says. “We wanted to see if we could detect differences between subspecies of chimps. And not surprisingly, we couldn’t. Therefore, analyses of tooth shapes cannot give as fine a resolution of dietary differences as we get with microscopic wear patterns.”
The third article, “How dental microwear and stable isotopes inform the paleoecology of extinct hominins,” combines analyses of microscopic tooth wear of human ancestors with analyses of isotopes found in their tooth enamel. Microscopic wear is affected by abrasives in the diet, acids in foods and even the toughness of foods, while isotopes monitor things like the kinds of plants an animal was eating when a particular tooth was being formed in the jaw. The work was conducted with a team of researchers from the University of Colorado, University of Oxford, Stony Brook University, and the University of Arkansas.
“When these two techniques were ?aimed’ at a human ancestor known to have huge flat molars and large chewing muscles, they both indicated that the ancestor was not eating hard foods, as had been suggested by traditional anatomical analyses,” Teaford explains. “This is giving researchers pause for thought about how anatomical traits change through evolution and how frequently animals eat certain crucial foods in their diets.”
Teaford says his extended research on the topic will allow him to present a clearer picture to students in his biological anthropology class of what our ancestors ate and how human evolution occurs.
“More importantly, the dental microwear techniques will also open up research possibilities for students at HPU,” Teaford adds.
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Pam Haynes
Communication Specialist
336-841-9055
[email protected]