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Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Sampling and Pretreatment of Tooth Enamel Carbonate for Stable Carbon and Oxygen Isotope Analysis
Published on: August 15, 2018
Properties of tooth enamel in great apes
James J-W Lee1, Dylan Morris, Paul J Constantino
1Ceramics Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA. james.lee@nist.gov
Abstract:
A comparative study has been made of human and great ape molar tooth enamel. Nanoindentation techniques are used to map profiles of elastic modulus and hardness across sections from the enamel-dentin junction to the outer tooth surface. The measured data profiles overlap between species, suggesting a degree of commonality in material properties. Using established deformation and fracture relations, critical loads to produce function-threatening damage in the enamel of each species are calculated for characteristic tooth sizes and enamel thicknesses. The results suggest that differences in load-bearing capacity of molar teeth in primates are less a function of underlying material properties than of morphology.
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