Abstract
Reconstructing the diets of extinct hominins is essential to understanding the paleobiology and evolutionary history of our lineage. Dental microwear, the study of microscopic tooth-wear resulting from use1,2,3,4, provides direct evidence of what an individual ate in the past. Unfortunately, established methods5,6,7,8,9,10 of studying microwear are plagued with low repeatability and high observer error11. Here we apply an objective, repeatable approach for studying three-dimensional microwear surface texture to extinct South African hominins. Scanning confocal microscopy12,13 together with scale-sensitive fractal analysis14,15,16,17,18,19 are used to characterize the complexity and anisotropy of microwear. Results for living primates show that this approach can distinguish among diets characterized by different fracture properties. When applied to hominins20, microwear texture analysis indicates that Australopithecus africanus microwear is more anisotropic, but also more variable in anisotropy than Paranthropus robustus. This latter species has more complex microwear textures, but is also more variable in complexity than A. africanus. This suggests that A. africanus ate more tough foods and P. robustus consumed more hard and brittle items, but that both had variable and overlapping diets.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Walker, A. C., Hoeck, H. N. & Perez, L. Microwear of mammalian teeth as an indicator of diet. Science 201, 808–810 (1978)
Rensberger, J. M. in Development, Function and Evolution of Teeth (eds Butler, P. M. & Joysey, K. A.) 415–438 (Academic, New York, 1978)
Ryan, A. S. Anterior dental microwear and its relationship to diet and feeding behaviour in three African primates (Pan troglodytes troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla gorilla, and Papio hamadryas). Primates 22, 533–550 (1981)
Gordon, K. D. A study of microwear on chimpanzee molars: implications for dental microwear analysis. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 59, 195–215 (1982)
Solounias, N., Teaford, M. & Walker, A. Interpreting the diet of extinct ruminants: the case of a non-browsing giraffid. Paleobiology 14, 287–300 (1988)
Ungar, P. S., Simons, J.-C. & Cooper, J. W. A semiautomated image analysis procedure for the quantification of dental microwear. Scanning 13, 31–36 (1991)
Pastor, R. F. Dietary adaptations and dental microwear in Mesolithic and Chalcolithic South Asia. J. Hum. Ecol. (special issue) 2, 215–228 (1992)
Molleson, T., Jones, K. & Jones, S. Dietary change and the effects of food preparation on microwear patterns in the Late Neolithic of abu Hureyra, northern Syria. J. Hum. Evol. 24, 455–468 (1993)
Teaford, M. F. A review of dental microwear and diet in modern mammals. Scanning Microsc. 2, 1149–1166 (1988)
Strait, S. G. Molar microwear in extant small-bodied faunivorous mammals: an analysis of feature density and pit frequency. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 92, 63–79 (1993)
Grine, F. E., Ungar, P. S. & Teaford, M. F. Error rates in dental microwear quantification using SEM. Scanning 24, 144–153 (2002)
Boyde, A. & Fortelius, M. New confocal LM method for studying local relative microrelief with special references to wear studies. Scanning 13, 429–430 (1991)
Ungar, P. S., Brown, C. A., Bergstrom, T. S. & Walker, A. Quantification of dental microwear by tandem scanning confocal microscopy and scale-sensitive fractal analyses. Scanning 25, 189–193 (2003)
Brown, C. A. & Savary, G. Describing ground surface texture using contact profilometry and fractal analysis. Wear 141, 211–226 (1991)
Brown, C. A., Charles, P. D., Johnsen, W. A. & Chesters, S. Fractal analysis of topographic data by the patchwork method. Wear 161, 61–67 (1993)
Brown, C. A., Johnsen, W. A. & Hult, K. M. Scale-sensitivity, fractal analysis and simulations. Int. J. Mach. Tool. Manu. 38, 633–637 (1998)
DeChiffre, L. et al. Quantitative characterization of surface texture. Annals CIRP 49, 635–652 (2000)
Brown, C. A. & Siegmann, S. Fundamental scales of adhesion and area-scale fractal analysis. Int. J. Mach. Tool. Manu. 41, 1927–1933 (2001)
Bergstrom, T. S. & Brown, C. A. Interaction between horizontal scanning instruments and surfaces. Int. J. Mach. Tool. Manu. 41, 1995–2000 (2001)
Grine, F. E. & Kay, R. F. Early hominid diets from quantitative image analysis of dental microwear. Nature 333, 765–768 (1988)
Eisenberg, J. F. Mammals of the Neotropics Vol. 1. The Northern Neotropics: Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana 233–261 (Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989)
Estrada, A. Resource use by howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata). Int. J. Primatol. 5, 105–131 (1984)
Neville, M. K., Glander, K. E., Braza, F. & Rylands, A. B. in Ecology and Behavior of Neotropical Primates Vol. 2 (eds Mittermeier, R. A., Rylands, A. B., Coimbra-Filho, A. F. & de Fonseca, G. A. B.) 349–453 (World Wildlife Fund, Washington DC, 1988)
Crompton, R. H., Savage, R. & Spears, I. H. The mechanics of food reduction in Tarsius bancanus: hard-object feeder, soft-object feeder or both? Folia Primatol. 69((suppl. 1)), 41–59 (1998)
Grine, F. E. Dental evidence for dietary differences in Australopithecus and Paranthropus. J. Hum. Evol. 15, 783–822 (1986)
Wrangham, R. W., Conklin-Brittain, N. L. & Hunt, K. D. Dietary response of chimpanzees and Cercopithecines to seasonal variation in fruit abundance. I. Antifeedants. Int. J. Primatol. 19, 971–998 (1998)
Stanford, C. B. & Nkurunungi, J. B. Behavioral ecology of sympatric chimpanzees and gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda: Diet. Int. J. Primatol. 24, 901–918 (2003)
Lambert, J. E., Chapman, C. A., Wrangham, R. W. & Conklin-Brittain, N. L. The hardness of cercopithecine foods: implications for the critical function of enamel thickness in exploiting fallback foods. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 125, 363–368 (2004)
Kay, R. F. The evolution of molar occlusion in the Cercopithecidae and early Catarrhines. Am. J. Phys. Anthrop. 46, 327–352 (1977)
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, National Standard B46.1: Surface Texture, Surface Roughness, Waviness and Lay (American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New York, 2002)
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the curators at the US National Museum of Natural History, the Transvaal Museum and the University of the Witwatersrand for permission to study specimens in their care, and thank A. Pérez-Pérez for his help preparing the hominin replicas. This project was funded by the US National Science Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
C.A.B. owns and operates Surfract (http://www.surfract.com), which developed and markets Kfrax. To the extent that someone might decide to purchase Kfrax as a result of this publication, he could benefit financially. Some features used in the analysis are in beta and development and are not commercially available.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Scott, R., Ungar, P., Bergstrom, T. et al. Dental microwear texture analysis shows within-species diet variability in fossil hominins. Nature 436, 693–695 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03822
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03822
This article is cited by
-
Complex dental wear analysis reveals dietary shift in Triassic placodonts (Sauropsida, Sauropterygia)
Swiss Journal of Palaeontology (2024)
-
Life in a Central European warm-temperate to subtropical open forest: Paleoecology of the rhinocerotids from Ulm-Westtangente (Aquitanian, Early Miocene, Germany)
The Science of Nature (2024)
-
Three-dimensional dental microwear in type-Maastrichtian mosasaur teeth (Reptilia, Squamata)
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
Seasonality and Lithic Investment in the Oldowan
Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology (2023)
-
Technological and functional analysis of 80–60 ka bone wedges from Sibudu (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)
Scientific Reports (2022)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.