TY - JOUR
T1 - Growth processes in teeth distinguish modern humans from Homo erectus and earlier hominins
AU - Dean, Christopher
AU - Leakey, Meave G.
AU - Reid, Donald
AU - Schrenk, Friedemann
AU - Schwartz, Gary T.
AU - Stringer, Christopher
AU - Walker, Alan
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank The Government of Kenya; The National Museums of Kenya; Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; the Natural History Museum, London; and F. Thackeray of the Transvaal Museum, South Africa for access to fossil material. We thank D. Antoine, B. Berkovitz, D. Beynon, D. Clements, C. FitzGerald, L. Humphrey, J. Jernvall, J. Kelley, C. Kiarie, R. Krusynski, D. Lieberman, G. Macho, P. O'Higgins, J. Pendjiky, F. Ramirez Rozzi, H. Smith, P. Smith, F. Spoor, P. Walton and B. Wood for their help. This research was enabled by research grants to C.D. from the Royal Society and the Leverhulme Trust.
PY - 2001/12/6
Y1 - 2001/12/6
N2 - A modern human-like sequence of dental development, as a proxy for the pace of life history, is regarded as one of the diagnostic hallmarks of our own genus Homo1-3. Brain size, age at first reproduction, lifespan and other life-history traits correlate tightly with dental development4-6. Here we report differences in enamel growth that show the earliest fossils attributed to Homo do not resemble modern humans in their development. We used daily incremental markings in enamel to calculate rates of enamel formation in 13 fossil hominins and identified differences in this key determinant of tooth formation time. Neither australopiths nor fossils currently attributed to early Homo shared the slow trajectory of enamel growth typical of modern humans; rather, both resembled modern and fossil African apes. We then reconstructed tooth formation times in australopiths, in the ∼1.5-Myrold Homo erectus skeleton from Nariokotome, Kenya7, and in another Homo erectus specimen, Sangiran S7-37 from Java8. These times were shorter than those in modern humans. It therefore seems likely that truly modern dental development emerged relatively late in human evolution.
AB - A modern human-like sequence of dental development, as a proxy for the pace of life history, is regarded as one of the diagnostic hallmarks of our own genus Homo1-3. Brain size, age at first reproduction, lifespan and other life-history traits correlate tightly with dental development4-6. Here we report differences in enamel growth that show the earliest fossils attributed to Homo do not resemble modern humans in their development. We used daily incremental markings in enamel to calculate rates of enamel formation in 13 fossil hominins and identified differences in this key determinant of tooth formation time. Neither australopiths nor fossils currently attributed to early Homo shared the slow trajectory of enamel growth typical of modern humans; rather, both resembled modern and fossil African apes. We then reconstructed tooth formation times in australopiths, in the ∼1.5-Myrold Homo erectus skeleton from Nariokotome, Kenya7, and in another Homo erectus specimen, Sangiran S7-37 from Java8. These times were shorter than those in modern humans. It therefore seems likely that truly modern dental development emerged relatively late in human evolution.
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U2 - 10.1038/414628a
DO - 10.1038/414628a
M3 - Article
C2 - 11740557
AN - SCOPUS:0035818987
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 414
SP - 628
EP - 631
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
IS - 6864
ER -