Dental microwear News

April 13 and 14, 2010, we are presenting some dental microwear results on Plio-Pleistocene African hominids in the annual Paleoanthropology Society meeting, held in St. Louis, Missouri.

Here you have the abstracts:

Hominin transition from closed forest to open environment: the evidence from buccal dental microwear analyses

Alejandro Pérez-Pérez, Laura M Martínez, Ferran Estebaranz
 
Buccal dental microwear has shown to be a reliable indicator of dietary habits and ecological conditions of Plio-Pleistocene Hominin species. Buccal dental microwear results on Australopithecus afarensis (Estebaranz et al., 2009) have provided with consistent results comparable to those obtained with occlusal microwear research (Grine et al., 2006). We now present a complete comparative analysis of the buccal dental microwear variability of fossil Hominin specimens, including A. anamensis, A. africanus, P. aethiopicus, P. robustus, P. boisei, H. habilis and H. ergaster. Results show a clear correlation between buccal microwear patterns and habitat reconstruction, with high densities of scratches in both closed environments for the australopithecines, similar to the non-Hominin Hominidae, and in open savannas for the Homo specimens. However, the robust australopithecines and the Early Homo specimens show intermediate, somewhat low, striation patterns. The results obtained do not support a highly carnivorous, with nil consumption of plant foods, diet for the Early Homo clade as might be derived from the "Expensive Tissue Hypothesis".
 
Acknowledgements

Research was funded by the Spanish CGL2007-60802 MEC project. SEM analyses were made at the SCT at the UB.

References

Estebaranz F, Martínez LM, Galbany J, Turbón D, Pérez-Pérez A (2009) Testing hypotheses of dietary reconstruction from buccal dental microwear in Australopithecus afarensis. J Hum Evol 57: 439-750. 
Grine F, Ungar PS, Teaford MF, El-Zaatari S (2006) Molar microwear in Preanthropus afarensis: evidence for dietary stasis through time and under diverse paleoecological conditions. J Hum Evol 51: 297–319.

Buccal dental microwear signals in the robust australopithecines P. aethiopicus, P. robustus and P. boisei: the low microwear density paradox revealed.

Laura M Martínez, Ferran Estebaranz, Alejandro Pérez-Pérez
 
Low microwear feature densities have been observed in Paranthropus boisei fossil specimens. This unexpected result seems to be inconsistent with the hard, tough dietary habits associated with this Hominin clade. The present poster presents relevant information on buccal dental microwear showing a great consistency in the microwear data in all the robust australopithecine species, including P. aethiopicus, P. robustus and P. boisei. The heavy loading hypothesis for these robust species is not supported by the buccal microwear analyses made.

Buccal dental microwear signals in the gracile australopithecines A. anamensis, A. afarensis and A. africanus: adaptations to open environments with climatic shift

Ferran Estebaranz, Laura M Martínez, Alejandro Pérez-Pérez
 
Buccal dental microwear analyses of Australopithecus afarensis fossil specimens have shown a time-related stability in dietary habits through at least one million years of Hominin evolution. The present analyses show that this dietary stasis does not hold for all the gracile australopithecines. A clear correlation between climatic conditions and microwear patterns are observed when A. anamensis and A. africanus are compared to A. afarensis. Their buccal microwear patterns clearly signal the ecological shifts that took place in Africa between 4.5 and 2.5 ma. The results obtained point out the uniqueness of Paranthropus' dietary specializations.