title: Distinct dental development patterns in early fossil hominids.
abstract: New studies on the jaws of hominids, based on incremental growth markings in teeth, can now provide an absolute timescale with which to calibrate dental developmental events such as tooth emergence. These new estimates of crown-formation times and the observed sequences of dental development are different in the hominids Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Early hominids evidently had shorter periods of dental development than modern humans and therefore a less prolonged infancy.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003743:Dental Enamel / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D003817:Dentition; D005580:Fossils; D000882:Haplorhini / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D009805:Odontogenesis; D010161:Paleodontology; D010163:Paleontology; D014070:Tooth / Q000033:anatomy & histology