Am J Phys Anthropol 99:119–133Īshton EH, Zuckerman S (1950) Some quantitative dental characteristics of the chimpanzee, gorilla, and orang-utan. Am J Phys Anthropol 86:229–241Īnemone RL, Mooney MP, Siegel MI (1996) Longitudinal study of dental development in chimpanzees of known chronological age: implications for understanding the age at death of Plio-Pleistocene hominids. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.Īnemone RL, Watts ES, Swindler DR (1991) Dental development of known-age chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes (Primates: Pongidae). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. Through techniques such as these will come a better understanding of the intricacies of dental function and a clearer picture of our past.

Finally, landmark-free analyses of tooth shape and wear are giving researchers the chance to actually monitor how teeth are used in living primates and by extrapolation in fossil primates too.

More realistic perspectives on the physical properties of foods are yielding new functional interpretations of differences in tooth size. In essence, genetic analyses are changing our perspectives on the evolution of morphology, while improved studies of dental development and microstructure have yielded permanent markers of developmental history and microstructural differences of functional significance. This chapter is a brief review of recent advances. Improvements in the primate fossil record, and in methods of data acquisition and analysis, have set the stage for new insights into the development, function, and evolution of hominoid teeth.

Chimpanzee teeth diagram