Playing 'possum: a microwear experiment

A recent experiment to evaluate the reliability of dental microwear as an indicator of diet seems to show that differences in diets fed to laboratory animals are not reflected by their tooth wear. We feel that these results are misleading, and reflect not so much the limits of microwear analysis per se, but rather result from the problems of design and execution inherent in any experimental simulation of natural feeding behavior. The experiment in question was flawed in several respects, and we think that changes in the methods and assumptions of the study are necessary before the experimental approach can yield meaningful results with which to test hypotheses about microwear analyses.