The microstructure of dentine in taxonomic and phylogenetic studies

Abstract

Traditionally, physical anthropologists have focused their dental studies on features of teeth that can be observed with the unaided eye, measured with calipers, or observed with light microscopes. With the advent of the scanning electron microscope, there has been renewed interest in the use of the microstructure of enamel in phylogenetic reconstruction and taxonomic classification. The microstructure of dentine has received far less research attention than has enamel although several investigators have proposed that dentine has taxon specificity. We report the first results of a study in which we investigated the taxon specificity of dentine. In our study, we exposed the dentinal tubules on the mesial root surfaces of 12 Canis, 11 Papio, and 12 Homo mandibular first molars and compared tubule density and pattern among the three taxa. Based on these parameters, 91.43% of the teeth were correctly identified as being dog, baboon, or human, respectively. We conclude that dentine has taxon-specific structural characteristics, which can be used in anthropological investigations. To our knowledge, this is the first comparative study of the micro-structure of teeth utilizing statistical analysis.

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