Shearer Brian M, Ungar Peter S, McNulty Kieran P, Harcourt-Smith William E H, Dunsworth Holly M, Teaford Mark F
Department of Anthropology, The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA; New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West and 79th St., New York, NY 10024, USA.
Department of Anthropology, University of Arkansas, Old Main 330, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA.
J Hum Evol. 2015 Jan;78:33-43. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.08.011. Epub 2014 Oct 3.
The Early Miocene of Kenya has yielded the remains of many important stem catarrhine species that provide a glimpse of the East African primate radiation at a time of major faunal turnover. These taxa have been subject to innumerable studies, yet there is still no consensus on their dietary niches. Here we report results of an analysis of dental microwear textures of non-cercopithecoid catarrhines from the Early Miocene of Kenya. Scanning confocal profilometry of all available molar specimens with undamaged occlusal surfaces revealed 82 individuals with unobscured antemortem microwear, representing Dendropithecus, Micropithecus, Limnopithecus, Proconsul, and Rangwapithecus. Scale-sensitive fractal analysis was used to generate microwear texture attributes for each individual, and the fossil taxa were compared with each other using conservative non-parametric statistical tests. This study revealed no discernible variation in microwear texture among the fossil taxa, which is consistent with results from a previous feature-based microwear study using smaller samples. Our results suggest that, despite their morphological differences, these taxa likely often consumed foods with similar abrasive and fracture properties. However, statistical analyses of microwear texture data indicate differences between the Miocene fossil sample and several extant anthropoid primate genera. This suggests that the African non-cercopithecoid catarrhines included in our study, despite variations in tooth form, had generalist diets that were not yet specialized to the degree of many modern taxa.
肯尼亚的早中新世出土了许多重要的狭鼻猴类干群物种的遗骸，这些遗骸让我们得以一窥在主要动物群更替时期东非灵长类动物的辐射演化情况。这些分类群已经接受了无数的研究，但关于它们的饮食生态位仍然没有达成共识。在此，我们报告了对肯尼亚早中新世非猕猴类狭鼻猴牙齿微磨损纹理的分析结果。对所有具有未受损咬合面的可用臼齿标本进行扫描共焦轮廓测量，发现了82个具有清晰生前微磨损的个体，它们分别代表树猿属、微猿属、湖猿属、原康修尔猿属和朗瓦猿属。使用尺度敏感分形分析为每个个体生成微磨损纹理属性，并使用保守的非参数统计检验对化石分类群进行相互比较。这项研究表明，在化石分类群之间没有发现明显的微磨损纹理差异，这与之前一项基于特征的使用较小样本的微磨损研究结果一致。我们的结果表明，尽管它们在形态上存在差异，但这些分类群可能经常食用具有相似研磨和断裂特性的食物。然而，对微磨损纹理数据的统计分析表明，中新世化石样本与几个现存类人猿灵长类属之间存在差异。这表明，我们研究中纳入的非洲非猕猴类狭鼻猴，尽管牙齿形态存在差异，但它们的饮食具有通用性，尚未像许多现代分类群那样特化。
