@inbook{a0e88bc786af4a958ebef8faaa25cce4,
title = "Dental Evidence for Diets of Early Homo",
abstract = "The evolution of diet in the earliest members of our genus, Homo rudolfensis, H. habilis and H. erectus has received increased attention over the past few years (see Ungar et al., 2006a for review). Many models have been constructed, based largely on nutritional studies combined with direct analogy (with living peoples or non-human primates) or on contextual evidence, such as archeological and paleoenvi-ronmental indicators. These models suggest hypotheses, some of which can be tested with the fossil evidence for the hominins themselves. In this paper we review and evaluate some recent models for the dietary adaptations of early Homo. While there are real intractable limits to what we can learn, the dental remains of these hominins offer some clues to the diets of these species. Results of a recent study on molar occlusal functional morphology (Ungar, 2004) will be reviewed, along with results from a recent study of dental microwear of early Homo (Ungar et al., 2006b). In addition, new data on dental microwear textures for early Homo cheek teeth will be presented for comparison with results for extant primates and other fossil hominins.",
keywords = "Dental topographic analysis, Diet, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Microweartexture analysis, Molars",
author = "Ungar, {Peter S.} and Scott, {Robert S.}",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgments We thank Richard Leakey, John Fleagle and Fred Grine for their invitation to participate in this volume and the workshop that led to it. We are especially grateful to Fred Grine, Mark Teaford, and Alejandro P{\'e}rez-P{\'e}rez for their help collecting impressions of specimens used in this study. We also thank Francis M{\textquoteright}Kirera and Sarah Taylor for their assistance collecting dental topography data for the extant primate baseline series. We acknowledge the curators at the National Museums of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the Transvaal Museum and the University of the Witwatersrand for allowing us to study the specimens in their care, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. PSU also thanks Fred Grine, Richard Kay, Mark Teaford and Alan Walker for their collegiality and for the keen insights on the evolution of human diets they have shared over the years. The background for this paper is expanded from a recent review by Ungar and coauthors (2006a) with some text reprinted with permission from Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 35 {\textcopyright} 2006 by Annual Reviews, www.annualreviews.org. This work was funded in part by grants from the US National Science Foundation and the LSB Leakey Foundation. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2009, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.",
year = "2009",
doi = "10.1007/978-1-4020-9980-9_11",
language = "English (US)",
series = "Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology",
publisher = "Springer",
number = "9781402099793",
pages = "121--134",
booktitle = "Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology",
edition = "9781402099793",
}