Thesis: The tooth morphology of robust australopithecines suggests that Australopithecines spent most of their time consuming hard materials.
Tooth abrasion and isotopic analysis and discrepancies among researches
Tooth abrasion shows hard foods.
Carbon isotopic evidence suggest that they consumed a diet mostly of dark leafy greens and nuts.
You must compare the modern and archaic human skull to the Australopithecines to see the greatest variation of tooth and craniological evolutionary modifications.
What implications do teeth size have on overall energy efficiency?
A mid-sagittal crest is designed to exert maximum force with minimal effort.
S. Zuckerman (1956), “Cranial Crests in the Anthropoidea” .
There is a evolutionary need for the mid-sagittal crest, its disappearance is just as
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Prinz (1997), suggests in the paper “An optimization model for mastication and swallowing in mammals” that bolus formation and the consistency of the food has varying “viscous cohesion” and that if too much time is spent chewing, and swallowing is delayed, swallowing becomes more “prearious”. Prinz’s model suggests that there is an optimal stage of oral food processing for mammals to swallow, as defined by an increase in cohesion in food particles.
L. Englen’s (2012) in the book, “Food Oral processing: Fundamentals of Eating and Sensory Perception”, suggests that saliva serves a multitude of purposes beyond creating a thin viscous layer on our food that creates a bolus and aiding swallowing by lubricating the materials. Saliva is secreted in the oral cavity both before and during the consumption of food. This is due to the “initiation of both mechanical and chemical stimuli via neural reflexes. Saliva is therefore a critical component during the consumption of food and beverages, and its properties are important to texture, mouthfeel and taste perception, as well as for oral
Chinese and Malaysian Homo Sapiens have very close features to the Neanderthal. The skull analysis of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are usually considered more accurate if the entire skull is examined, rather than certain ...
A study performed by Martin Hausler and Peter Schmid of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, appeared in the October 1995 issue of Journal of Human Evolution, igniting controversy over the 1974 Australopithecus discoveries in Hadar, Ethiopia. The most famous of the Hadar specimens is the 3-million-year-old skeleton, “Lucy,” who was recovered by paleoanthropologist, Donald Johanson. In his article, Shreeve presents the methods and findings of Hausler and Schmid’s study as well as some counter arguments from other scientists in the field.
All primates have essentially the same kinds of specialized mammalian teeth adapted to eating a wide variety of foods. Beginning at the front, each quadrant of the mouth has 2 incisors, 1 canine, and varying numbers of premolars and molars. The incisors are used like scissors for nipping off pieces of food. The pointed canines are for piercing and tearing. The premolars and molars, with their cusps, are used to grind and smash food. In platyrrhine species, there are 3 premolars and 2 or 3 molars. This results in a dental formula of 2.1.3.2 or 2.1.3.3. In contrast, all of the catarrhines have 2 premolars and 3 molars, making a dental formula of 2.1.2.3. The chimpanzee shown below is an Old World anthropoid species and, therefore, has a catarrhine dental formula.
The first morphological features that later would become typical of Neanderthals, the projecting middle part of the face and a depression at the back of the skull, have been observed in fossils found in Europe as old as 400,000 years (Stringer & Hublin, 1999). These fossils belonged to Homo heidelbergensis, which in one of the various evolutionary scenarios that ties Neanderthals and modern humans is considered the ancestor of both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens (Hubmlin, 2009).
All non-human primates sleep in the trees at night. So, it would seem to be that A. afarensis slept in trees also. Their skeletal structure agrees with their arboreal lifestyle. “The large premolars of A. afarensis suggests they were frugivores, and the thick enamel on the teeth suggests they may have eaten nuts, grains, or hard fruit pies” (Boyd and Silk, p.
The evolution of the human species has significantly changed during the course of evolution to what is now the modern day Homo sapiens. Some of the changes that have occurred through the evolution are bipedalism, changes in body features such as brow ridges, and an increase in brain capacity.
Gould, S.J., & Vrba, E.S. 1982. Exaptation- a missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology, 8(1): 4-15.
Most of their evidence comes from the fossilized bones of Neanderthals and Cro- Magnons, or modern man’s ancestors (Shreeve, 150). There is a definite difference between their bone structures, and it may be a significant enough difference to divide them into species. There is a set of traits that distinguishes Neanderthals. Their general proportions are short, robust, and strong. Males and females of all ages have thick bones, and very pronounced muscle and ligament attachment sites. They also have distinct facial and cranial features. They have a large skull with no chin, a significant brow-ridge, and a large nasal opening (Shreeve, 49-150). They have large brains, around 1400cc, that protrude in the back, causing an occipital bun in the skull (Lecture, 4/19). Cro-Magnons on the other hand look more like humans do today. They are more slender and not as muscular, with chins and rounder skulls with slightly smaller brains among other traits.
The mouth is where digestion begins and the mechanical breakdown of food takes place. This is because the food is chewed and then
Bindon, Jim 2004 Fossil Hominids. ANT 270 Notes. http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant270/lectures/ hominids1.pdf Delson, Eric 1981
If you are abreast with the history, some thousands of years ago, during the Paleolithic Age, cavemen had very few options for the foods that they could eat. As a result, their food intake was usually just restricted to fish, vegetables, nuts and the like.
Modern-day genetic technology has granted mankind with the opportunity to bring back extinct species from the dead. If humans have come to possess the DNA from an extinct animal population, it is possible to create an identical clone of the animal in question, effectively “bringing it back from the dead”. Many ethical dilemmas surround the practice of de-extinction, and rightfully so. Recreating an extinct species could produce groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs, generating exciting opportunities for future genetics-based research. However, there could also be monumental consequences: the newly revived, once-extinct species might destroy the ecological equilibrium of modern Earth
Teaford, Mark F. "Diet and the Evolution of the Earliest Human Ancestors." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 5 Oct. 2000. Web. 19 Nov. 2015. .
The gustatory system is the system that determines taste senses. Taste is detected by the molecules that enter the mouth, either in liquid or solid form (Goldstein, 2010). Taste can be known as a gatekeeper, which its purpose is to create a connection between the substance’s effect and the taste quality. Most people enjoy sweet and salty compounds that contain nutritive value and are essential for comforting. Not only do sweet compounds produce a satisfying sensation, they also provoke an anticipatory metabolic response that prepares the gastrointestinal system for digesting these foods and cause an automatic acceptance response (Goldstein, 2010).
The increase in brain size may be related to changes in hominine behavior (See figure 3). The third major trend in hominine development is the gradual decrease in the size of the face and teeth. According to the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia ’98, the fossil evidence for direct ancestors of modern humans is divided into the category Australopithecus and Homo, and begins about 5 million years ago (See figure 1). Between 7 and 20 million years ago, primitive apelike animals were widely distributed on the African and, later, on the Eurasian continents (See figure 2). Although many fossil bones and teeth have been found, the way of life of these creatures, and their evolutionary relationships to the living apes and humans, remain matters of active discussion among scientists.