New Visions of Dental Tissue Research: Tooth Development, Chemistry, and Structure

Teeth are one of the best preserved and most commonly recovered elements in primate fossil assemblages. Taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic hypotheses often rely on dental characters, despite considerable evidence of homoplasy in tooth form and large variation in tooth size within and among primates. (1, 2) Recent studies have led to new areas of research centered on incremental tooth development, chemical composition, and internal structure. Due to rapid technological developments in imaging and elemental sampling, these new approaches have the potential to increase our understanding of developmental biology, including not only changes in the pace of growth and reproduction, but also our assessments of diets, migration patterns, environments, and taxonomy. The integration of these temporal, chemical, and structural approaches heralds a bright future for the role of dental tissue research in evolutionary anthropology.