Soft fruits may have been the main dish on some ancient primate menus.
The more than 400 analyzed teeth belonged to five primate genera — including Propliopithecus, Apidium and Aegyptopithecus — and are around 29 million to 35 million years old. Fossils that old date to a time when the last common ancestor of apes, including humans, and African and Asian monkeys still existed, says Ian Towle, a dental anthropologist at Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana in Burgos, Spain.
By examining dental damage from millions of years ago that might have been caused by food, “it gives insight into our own evolution, our own dietary changes through time,” he says.
While at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Towle and colleagues counted fractures that could be seen with the naked eye, noting each fracture’s severity and position on the tooth. Just 21 teeth, about 5 percent, were chipped.
2024-01-05 08:00:00
Original from www.sciencenews.org