Scott Robert S, Ungar Peter S, Bergstrom Torbjorn S, Brown Christopher A, Grine Frederick E, Teaford Mark F, Walker Alan
[1] Department of Anthropology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701, USA [2] *These authors contributed equally to this work.
Nature. 2005 Aug 4;436(7051):693-5. doi: 10.1038/nature03822.
Reconstructing the diets of extinct hominins is essential to understanding the paleobiology and evolutionary history of our lineage. Dental microwear, the study of microscopic tooth-wear resulting from use, provides direct evidence of what an individual ate in the past. Unfortunately, established methods of studying microwear are plagued with low repeatability and high observer error. Here we apply an objective, repeatable approach for studying three-dimensional microwear surface texture to extinct South African hominins. Scanning confocal microscopy together with scale-sensitive fractal analysis are used to characterize the complexity and anisotropy of microwear. Results for living primates show that this approach can distinguish among diets characterized by different fracture properties. When applied to hominins, microwear texture analysis indicates that Australopithecus africanus microwear is more anisotropic, but also more variable in anisotropy than Paranthropus robustus. This latter species has more complex microwear textures, but is also more variable in complexity than A. africanus. This suggests that A. africanus ate more tough foods and P. robustus consumed more hard and brittle items, but that both had variable and overlapping diets.
重建已灭绝古人类的饮食对于理解我们这个谱系的古生物学和进化史至关重要。牙齿微痕研究，即对因使用而产生的微观牙齿磨损的研究，能直接证明个体过去吃了什么。不幸的是，现有的研究微痕的方法存在重复性低和观察者误差大的问题。在此，我们应用一种客观、可重复的方法来研究已灭绝的南非古人类的三维微痕表面纹理。共聚焦扫描显微镜结合尺度敏感分形分析用于表征微痕的复杂性和各向异性。对现存灵长类动物的研究结果表明，这种方法能够区分以不同断裂特性为特征的饮食。当应用于古人类时，微痕纹理分析表明，南方古猿的微痕更具各向异性，但在各向异性方面也比粗壮傍人更具变异性。后一个物种具有更复杂的微痕纹理，但在复杂性方面也比南方古猿更具变异性。这表明南方古猿食用了更多坚韧的食物，而粗壮傍人则摄入了更多坚硬易脆的食物，但两者的饮食都具有变异性且有重叠。
