Early life stress disrupts growth and creates horizontal grooves on the tooth surface in humans and other mammals, yet there is no consensus for their quantitative analysis. Linear defects are considered to be nonspecific stress indicators, but evidence suggests that intermittent, severe stressors create deeper defects than chronic, low-level stressors. However, species-specific growth patterns also influence defect morphology, with faster-growing teeth having shallower defects at the population level. Here we describe a method to measure the depth of linear enamel defects and normal growth increments (i.e., perikymata) from high-resolution 3D topographies using confocal profilometry and apply it to a diverse sample of Homo neanderthalensis and H. sapiens anterior teeth. Debate surrounds whether Neanderthals exhibited modern human-like growth patterns in their teeth and other systems, with some researchers suggesting that they experienced more severe childhood stress. Our results suggest that Neanderthals have shallower features than H. sapiens from the Upper Paleolithic, Neolithic, and medieval eras, mirroring the faster growth rates in Neanderthal anterior teeth. However, when defect depth is scaled by perikymata depth to assess their severity, Neolithic humans have less severe defects, while Neanderthals and the other H. sapiens groups show evidence of more severe early life growth disruptions.
The tenth annual congress of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution (ESHE) took place as a worldwide virtual event on 24-25 September 2020, instead of as originally planned in Tübingen, Germany. Since its inception in 2011, ESHE has helped unify European paleoanthropologists, archeologists and those in related disciplines. The first decade of ESHE has seen a consistently high level of scientific interest, currently with 282 paid members. Of those, 260 people registered for the meeting and 100-120 attended each session. The proceedings included a total of 133 abstracts for podium talks, Pecha Kucha presentations and posters, with student prizes awarded for best Pecha Kucha and poster. The online format blurred
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