Search results for "Paleodontology"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
Dental calculus indicates widespread plant use within the stable Neanderthal dietary niche.
2018
The ecology of Neanderthals is a pressing question in the study of hominin evolution. Diet appears to have played a prominent role in their adaptation to Eurasia. Based on isotope and zooarchaeological studies, Neanderthal diet has been reconstructed as heavily meat-based and generally similar across different environments. This image persists, despite recent studies suggesting more plant use and more variation. However, we have only a fragmentary picture of their dietary ecology, and how it may have varied among habitats, because we lack broad and environmentally representative information about their use of plants and other foods. To address the problem, we examined the plant microremains…
The Bronze Age burials from Cova Dels Blaus (Vall d′Uixó, Castelló, Spain): An approach to palaeodietary reconstruction through dental pathology, occ…
2005
This paper reports a palaeodietary investigation of the human remains found in the collective Bronze Age burial cave from Vall d'Uixó (Castelló, Spain). Dental pathology, tooth wear as well as buccal dental microwear were analysed. Percentages of dental pathologies were compared with Chalcolithic and Bronze Age sites from the same territory. Dental caries, ante-mortem tooth loss, periodontal disease and abscess frequencies indicate a diet rich in carbohydrate foods. However, dental calculus percentages and macroscopic wear patterns suggest a diet not exclusively relying on agricultural resources. In addition, buccal dental microwear density and length by orientation recorded on micrographs …
The Neanderthalian molar from Hunas, Germany
2005
Abstract In this paper, we present a well-preserved isolated human molar found in 1986 in the Hunas cave ruin, south-east Bavaria. The tooth was located at the bottom of layer F2, which belongs to a long stratigraphic sequence comprising faunal remains as well as archaeological levels (Mousterian). A stalagmite from layer P at the base of the stratigraphic sequence was recently dated to 79.373±8.237 ka (base) and 76.872±9.686 ka (tip) by TIMS-U/Th (Stanford University). We identified the tooth as a right (possibly third) mandibular molar. Characteristic parameters such as crown and root morphology, fissure pattern, enamel thickness, occlusal and interproximal wear, dental dimensions and ind…
New Miocene locality in Turkey with evidence on the origin of Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus.
1977
Collections in early Middle Miocene deposits at Pasalar in Turkey have yielded a very rich fauna. Included in this are two hominoid species referred here to Sivapithecus darwini (Abel) 1902 and Ramapithecus wickeri (Leakey) 1962. These are both more primitive morphologically and earlier in time than other species of these genera, and they provide evidence that Sivapithecus and Ramapithecus are closely related and that their early diversification may have occurred not in Africa but in Eurasia.