Dental microwear and diet in Venezuelan primates

Mark F. Teaford · Jacqueline Runestad Connour

118 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology

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Primate Behavior and Ecology Evolution and Paleontology Studies Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

Abstract

Recent microwear analyses have demonstrated that wear patterns can be correlated with dietary differences. However, much of this work has been based on analyses of museum material where dates and locations of collection are not well known. In view of these difficulties, it would be desirable to compare microwear patterns for different genera collected from the same area at the same time. The opportunity to do this was provided by the collections of the Smithsonian Venezuelan Project (Handley, 1976), in which multiple primate genera were collected from the same humid tropical forest sites within the same month. The monkeys represent a wide range of dietary preferences, and include Saimiri, Cebus, Chiropotes, Ateles, Aotus, Pithecia, and Alouatta. As in previous microwear analyses, epoxy replicas were prepared from dental impressions, as described by Rose (1983) and Teaford and Oyen (1989). Two micrographs were taken of facet 9 on an upper second molar of each specimen. Computations and analyses were the same as described by Teaford and Robinson (1989). Results reaffirm previously documented differences in dental microwear between primates that feed on hard objects versus those that do not--with Pithecia and Alouatta at the extremes of a range of microwear patterns including more subtle differences between species with intermediate diets. The subtle microwear differences are by no means easy to document in museum samples. However, additional results suggest that 1) the width of microscopic scratches may be a poor indicator of dietary differences, 2) large and small pits may be formed differently, and 3) there are very few seasonal differences in dental microwear in the primates at these humid tropical forest sites.

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References

1991Advances in dental anthropology 1984Five New World Primates: A Study in Comparative Ecology 1981Ecology and behavior of neotropical primates 1980Foraging behavior: ecological, ethological, and psychological approaches 1986Dental evidence for dietary differences in Australopithecus and Paranthropus: a quantitative analysis of permanent molar microwear 1984Quantitative differences in dental microwear between primate species with different diets and a comment on the presumed diet of Sivapithecus 1987Primate ecology and conservation 1989In vivo and in vitro turnover in dental microwear

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1994Incisor microwear of Sumatran anthropoid primates 1996Preliminary examination of non-occlusal dental microwear in anthropoids: Implications for the study of fossil primates 1993Molar microwear in extant small‐bodied faunivorous mammals: An analysis of feature density and pit frequency 2012Teasing apart the contributions of hard dietary items on 3D dental microtextures in primates 1999Terrestrial foraging and dental microwear inPapio ursinus

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