Cervical and crown outline analysis of worn Neanderthal and modern human lower second deciduous molars.
Despite the general increase in digital techniques for dental morphometric analyses, only a few methods are available to study worn teeth. Moreover, permanent dentitions are studied much more frequently than deciduous teeth. In this study, we address both issues by providing a taxonomic classification of Neanderthal and modern human (MH) lower second deciduous molars (dm(2) s) through the analysis of crown and cervical outlines. Crown and cervical outlines were obtained from a three-dimensional (3D) digital sample of uniformly oriented dm(2) s. Both outlines were centered on the centroid of their area and represented by 16 pseudolandmarks obtained by equiangularly spaced radial vectors out of the centroid. We removed size information from the oriented and centered outlines with a uniform scaling of the pseudolandmark configurations to unit Centroid Size. Group shape variation was evaluated separately for the dm(2) crown and cervical outlines through a shape-space principal component (PC) analysis. Finally, quadratic discriminant analysis of a subset of PCs was used to classify the specimens. Our results demonstrate that both outlines successfully separate the two groups. Neanderthals showed a buccodistal expansion and convex lingual outline shape, whilst MHs have buccodistal reduction and straight lingual outline shape. Therefore, we confirmed that the cervical outline represents an effective parameter for distinguishing between the two taxa when dealing with worn or damaged dm(2) s.
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. stefano_benazzi@eva.mpg.de
Stefano
S
Benazzi
Cinzia
C
Fornai
Laura
L
Buti
Michel
M
Toussaint
Francesco
F
Mallegni
Stefano
S
Ricci
Giorgio
G
Gruppioni
Gerhard W
GW
Weber
Silvana
S
Condemi
Annamaria
A
Ronchitelli
D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D008963:Molar / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000473:pathology*; D059125:Neanderthals / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D019237:Tooth Cervix / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000473:pathology; D019228:Tooth Crown / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000473:pathology; D057085:Tooth Wear / Q000473:pathology*; D014094:Tooth, Deciduous / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000473:pathology*