Book Review: Dental Perspectives on Human Evolution: State-of-the-Art Research in Dental Paleoanthropology

摘要

As the editors of this excellent volume state in theirnforeword, it is appropriate that the first symposium onnhuman evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolu-ntionary Anthropology in Leipzig (held in May 2005) wasndevoted to the analysis of teeth in a paleoanthropologicalncontext. As a result of the likelihood of mineralized teethnand dense jaw bones being preserved, the overwhelmingnsignal in the hominin (indeed, in the vertebrate) fossil re-ncord is a dental one. In addition, the intrinsic characteris-ntics of dental hard tissues make them extremely informa-ntive about functional, dietary, phylogenetic, and life his-ntory parameters. The resulting edited volume is ansignificant contribution to the fields of dental anthropol-nogy and paleoanthropology and provides a useful glimpsenof the current state-of-the-art of the scientific study andnevolutionary significance of primate and human teeth.nThe editors and the contributors have a broad view of thenrelevance of dental anthropology to the study of humannevolution, and this conceptual breadth yields papers thatndeal with many of the areas where the study of teeth cannfurnish insights into the course of human evolution. Innaddition, some of the most interesting papers in this vol-nume provide detailed descriptions of new imaging and an-nalytical methods that, in some cases, have already yieldednmajor returns in the study of dental anthropology andnhuman origins and, in every case, promise more insightsnin the near future.