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Systematic Assessment of Mammalian Skull Specimens for Dental and Temporomandibular Joint Pathology

Systematic Assessment of Mammalian Skull Specimens for Dental and Temporomandibular Joint Pathology

Published on: August 22, 2022

Dental development in Homo naledi.

Zachary Cofran^1,2, Christopher S Walker^3,4,2

¹Anthropology Department, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA zcofran@vassar.edu.

Biology Letters

|September 1, 2017

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The study of Homo naledi

Keywords:

hominin life history ontogeny teeth tooth eruption

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Area of Science:

Paleoanthropology
Evolutionary Biology
Primate Dental Development

Background:

Human life history and prolonged somatic development are unique among primates, with unclear evolutionary origins.
Dental development serves as a proxy for reconstructing life history evolution in hominins, suggesting a recent human developmental pattern.
Homo naledi, a mosaic hominin species, offers insights into primate evolution due to its unique morphology and late survival.

Purpose of the Study:

To analyze tooth formation and eruption patterns in Homo naledi.
To compare Homo naledi's dental development with human and chimpanzee patterns.
To investigate the implications of Homo naledi's dental development for understanding hominin life history evolution.

Main Methods:

Analysis of deciduous and permanent tooth formation and eruption sequences in two Homo naledi specimens.
Comparative analysis of dental development patterns between Homo naledi, modern humans, and chimpanzees.
Integration of dental development data with Homo naledi's geological age and brain size.

Main Results:

Deciduous dental development in Homo naledi shows more similarity to humans than chimpanzees, likely reflecting ancestral traits.
Permanent tooth development in Homo naledi exhibits a mosaic pattern, with some human-like and some chimpanzee-like features.
The M2 tooth eruption in Homo naledi occurs late, a pattern observed in modern humans and associated with slow life history, which is unexpected for a small-brained hominin.

Conclusions:

Homo naledi's dental development presents a complex picture, challenging simple correlations between brain size, life history, and dental development.
The late M2 eruption in Homo naledi suggests a potentially slow life history, raising questions about its evolutionary significance in small-brained hominins.
The findings highlight the intricate relationship between dental development, life history, and evolutionary pathways within the hominin clade.