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  • Disentangling isolated dental remains of Asian Pleistocene hominins and pongines

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    Author(s)
    Smith, Tanya M
    Houssaye, Alexandra
    Kullmer, Ottmar
    Le Cabec, Adeline
    Olejniczak, Anthony J
    Schrenk, Friedemann
    de Vos, John
    Tafforeau, Paul
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Smith, Tanya M.
    Year published
    2018
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    Abstract
    Scholars have debated the taxonomic identity of isolated primate teeth from the Asian Pleistocene for over a century, which is complicated by morphological and metric convergence between orangutan (Pongo) and hominin (Homo) molariform teeth. Like Homo erectus, Pongo once showed considerable dental variation and a wide distribution throughout mainland and insular Asia. In order to clarify the utility of isolated dental remains to document the presence of hominins during Asian prehistory, we examined enamel thickness, enamel-dentine junction shape, and crown development in 33 molars from G. H. R. von Koenigswald's Chinese ...
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    Scholars have debated the taxonomic identity of isolated primate teeth from the Asian Pleistocene for over a century, which is complicated by morphological and metric convergence between orangutan (Pongo) and hominin (Homo) molariform teeth. Like Homo erectus, Pongo once showed considerable dental variation and a wide distribution throughout mainland and insular Asia. In order to clarify the utility of isolated dental remains to document the presence of hominins during Asian prehistory, we examined enamel thickness, enamel-dentine junction shape, and crown development in 33 molars from G. H. R. von Koenigswald's Chinese Apothecary collection (11 Sinanthropus officinalis [= Homo erectus], 21 “Hemanthropus peii,” and 1 “Hemanthropus peii” or Pongo) and 7 molars from Sangiran dome (either Homo erectus or Pongo). All fossil teeth were imaged with non-destructive conventional and/or synchrotron micro-computed tomography. These were compared to H. erectus teeth from Zhoukoudian, Sangiran and Trinil, and a large comparative sample of fossil Pongo, recent Pongo, and recent human teeth. We find that Homo and Pongo molars overlap substantially in relative enamel thickness; molar enamel-dentine junction shape is more distinctive, with Pongo showing relatively shorter dentine horns and wider crowns than Homo. Long-period line periodicity values are significantly greater in Pongo than in H. erectus, leading to longer crown formation times in the former. Most of the sample originally assigned to S. officinalis and H. erectus shows greater affinity to Pongo than to the hominin comparative sample. Moreover, enamel thickness, enamel-dentine junction shape, and a long-period line periodicity value in the “Hemanthropus peii” sample are indistinguishable from fossil Pongo. These results underscore the need for additional recovery and study of associated dentitions prior to erecting new taxa from isolated teeth.
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    Journal Title
    PLoS One
    Volume
    13
    Issue
    11
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0204737
    Copyright Statement
    © 2018 Smith et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
    Subject
    Biological (physical) anthropology
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/381468
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