Intra‐individual metameric variation expressed at the enamel‐dentine junction of lower post‐canine dentition of South African fossil hominins and modern humans

Abstract

The distalward increase of metameric variation along the modern human molar row is consistent with the odontogenetic models of molar row structure (inhibitory cascade model). Though much remains to be tested, the variable trends and magnitudes in metamerism in fossil hominins reported here, together with differences in the scale of shape change between modern humans and fossil hominins may provide valuable information regarding functional morphology and developmental processes in fossil species.

Endostructural morphology in hominoid mandibular third premolars: Geometric morphometric analysis of dentine crown shape

“…GM provides a powerful method of biological shape analysis, and can be useful for quantifying morphological changes in dental studies (Gómez-Robles et al, 2008;Singleton et al, 2011;Carayon et al, 2019), as well as in addressing issues of hominin taxonomy (Skinner et al, 2008;Zanolli and Mazurier, 2013;Martin et al, 2017;Hublin et al, 2017;Hershkovitz et al, 2018). Typically these studies focus on mandibular and maxillary molars, although a number of studies have performed GM analysis of the EDJ of multiple tooth positions, including mandibular premolars (Braga et al 2010;Pan et al, 2017;Zanolli et al 2018).…”

A Neanderthal from the Central Western Zagros, Iran. Structural reassessment of the Wezmeh 1 maxillary premolar

“…Because of its discriminant value, quantitative information on the inner tooth structural organization and tissue proportions is increasingly used in paleoanthropological research as a reliable tool of taxonomic significance, including among species within the genus Homo (e.g., Macchiarelli et al, 2006;Olejniczak et al, 2008;Skinner et al, 2008;Smith et al, 2009;Benazzi et al, 2011;Liu et al, 2013;Crevecoeur et al, 2014;Martinón-Torres et al, 2014;Weber et al, 2016;Hublin et al, 2017;Martin et al, 2017;Martínez de Pinillos et al, 2017;Pan et al, 2017;Hershkovitz et al, 2018;Xing et al, 2018;Zanolli et al, 2018a).…”

Metameric variation of upper molars in hominoids and its implications for the diversification of molar morphogenesis

“…In order to address the above issues, we use the morphometric mapping (MMap) method (Zollikofer and Ponce de León, 2001;Bondioli et al, 2010;Morimoto et al, 2011Morimoto et al, , 2012Morimoto et al, , 2014Morimoto et al, , 2018Zanolli et al, 2014Zanolli et al, , 2017Morita et al, 2016Morita et al, , 2017 to quantitatively evaluate MVM. Applying landmark-based conventional geometric morphometric methods to the analyses of MVM of entire EDJ surfaces is difficult due to the problem of non-correspondency of potentially homologous features of the complex and variable EDJ surfaces-but see Braga et al (2010), Pan et al (2017) and Skinner et al 7 (2008Skinner et al 7 ( , 2009a, for limited EDJ analyses of the occlusal fovea or the occlusal and basal crown outlines. This concerns comparisons across both taxa and molar elements.…”