From leaves to seeds? The dietary shift in late Miocene colobine monkeys of southeastern Europe

Abstract

Extant colobine monkeys are specialized leaf eaters. But during the late Miocene, western Eurasia was home to colobines that were less efficient at chewing leaves than they were at breaking seed shells. To understand the link between folivory and granivory in this lineage, the dietary niche of Mesopithecus delsoni and Mesopithecus pentelicus was investigated in southeastern Europe, where a major environmental change occurred during the late Miocene. We combined dental topographic estimates of chewing efficiency with dental microwear texture analysis of enamel wear facets. Mesopithecus delsoni was more efficient at chewing leaves than M. pentelicus, the dental topography of which matches an opportunistic seed eater. Concurrently, microwear complexity increases in M. pentelicus, especially in the northernmost localities corresponding to present‐day Bulgaria. This is interpreted as a dietary shift toward hard foods such as seeds or tubers, which is consistent with the savanna and open mixed forest biomes that covered Bulgaria during the Tortonian. The fact that M. delsoni was better adapted to folivory and consumed a lower amount of hard foods than M. pentelicus suggests that colobines either adapted to folivory before their dispersal to Europe or evolved adaptations to leaf consumption in multiple occurrences.

Description of new mandibular remains ofMicrocolobusfrom Nakali (ca. 10 Ma, Kenya): implications on the evolution of Miocene colobines

“…Although previous work (Delson 1973;Swindler and Orlosky 1974) and our analysis have demonstrated qualitative and quantitative differences in the P 4 morphology of extant colobines, further analytical work is needed to fully grasp its usefulness in taxonomic discrimination in the fossil record. This is especially true for the presence / absence of additional cuspules, and new advances in shape analysis, notably dental topography (Thiery et al 2017(Thiery et al , 2021Plastiras et al 2022), should provide more information about this.…”

Identifying the Impact of Soil Ingestion on Dental Microwear Textures Using a Wild Boar Experimental Model

“…R. S. Scott et al, 2006;Ungar et al, 2008;Merceron et al, 2009; R. S. Scott et al, 2012;Berlioz et al, 2018;Blondel et al, 2018;F. Martin et al, 2018;Lazagabaster, 2019;Merceron et al, 2021;Thiery et al, 2021). Both SSFA (Scale-Sensitive Fractal Analysis; Scott et al 2006) and STA (Surface Texture Analysis; Schulz et al, 2010) approaches have shown their efficiency in detecting dietary differences between species (e.g.…”