Growth processes in teeth distinguish modern humans from Homo erectus and earlier hominins

Christopher Dean (), Meave G. Leakey, Donald Reid, Friedemann Schrenk, Gary T. Schwartz, Christopher Stringer and Alan Walker
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Christopher Dean: Evolutionary Anatomy Unit, University College London
Meave G. Leakey: National Museums of Kenya
Donald Reid: Oral Biology, Dental School
Friedemann Schrenk: Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Palaeanthropologie
Gary T. Schwartz: The George Washington University
Christopher Stringer: Human Origins Group, The Natural History Museum
Alan Walker: 409 Carpenter Building, Pennsylvania State University

Nature, 2001, vol. 414, issue 6864, 628-631

Abstract: Abstract 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 Homo1,2,3. Brain size, age at first reproduction, lifespan and other life-history traits correlate tightly with dental development4,5,6. 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-Myr-old 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.

Date: 2001
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DOI: 10.1038/414628a

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