Olejniczak Anthony J, Tafforeau Paul, Feeney Robin N M, Martin Lawrence B
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
J Hum Evol. 2008 Feb;54(2):187-95. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2007.09.014. Epub 2007 Nov 28.
Molar enamel thickness has played an important role in the taxonomic, phylogenetic, and dietary assessments of fossil primate teeth for nearly 90 years. Despite the frequency with which enamel thickness is discussed in paleoanthropological discourse, methods used to attain information about enamel thickness are destructive and record information from only a single plane of section. Such semidestructive planar methods limit sample sizes and ignore dimensional data that may be culled from the entire length of a tooth. In light of recently developed techniques to investigate enamel thickness in 3D and the frequent use of enamel thickness in dietary and phylogenetic interpretations of living and fossil primates, the study presented here aims to produce and make available to other researchers a database of 3D enamel thickness measurements of primate molars (n=182 molars). The 3D enamel thickness measurements reported here generally agree with 2D studies. Hominoids show a broad range of relative enamel thicknesses, and cercopithecoids have relatively thicker enamel than ceboids, which in turn have relatively thicker enamel than strepsirrhine primates, on average. Past studies performed using 2D sections appear to have accurately diagnosed the 3D relative enamel thickness condition in great apes and humans: Gorilla has the relatively thinnest enamel, Pan has relatively thinner enamel than Pongo, and Homo has the relatively thickest enamel. Although the data set presented here has some taxonomic gaps, it may serve as a useful reference for researchers investigating enamel thickness in fossil taxa and studies of primate gnathic biology.
近90年来，臼齿釉质厚度在对灵长类化石牙齿的分类学、系统发育学和饮食评估中发挥了重要作用。尽管在古人类学论述中经常讨论釉质厚度，但用于获取有关釉质厚度信息的方法具有破坏性，且仅从单个截面平面记录信息。这种半破坏性的平面方法限制了样本大小，并忽略了可能从牙齿全长采集的尺寸数据。鉴于最近开发的用于三维研究釉质厚度的技术，以及在对现存和化石灵长类动物的饮食和系统发育解释中经常使用釉质厚度，本文提出的研究旨在生成一个灵长类臼齿三维釉质厚度测量数据库（n = 182颗臼齿）并提供给其他研究人员。此处报告的三维釉质厚度测量结果总体上与二维研究结果一致。类人猿的相对釉质厚度范围较广，猕猴类的釉质相对比卷尾猴类厚，而卷尾猴类的釉质又平均比原猴亚目灵长类厚。过去使用二维切片进行的研究似乎已准确诊断出大猩猩和人类的三维相对釉质厚度情况：大猩猩的釉质相对最薄，黑猩猩的釉质比猩猩薄，而人类的釉质相对最厚。尽管此处呈现的数据集存在一些分类学上的空白，但它可能为研究化石类群釉质厚度的研究人员以及灵长类颌骨生物学研究提供有用的参考。
