Priscilla Baylea,1, Roberto Macchiarellia,b, Erik Trinkausc,1, Cidália Duarted, Arnaud Mazuriere, and
João Zilhãof
-Author Affiliations
aDépartement de Préhistoire, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 75013 Paris, France;
bDépartement Géosciences, Université de Poitiers, 86000 Poitiers, France;
cDepartment of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130;
dDepartamento Património e Aprovisonamento, Câmara Municipal do Porto, 4049-001 Porto, Portugal;
eSociété Etudes Recherches Matériaux, CRI-Biopôle, 86000 Poitiers, France; and
fDepartment of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UU, United Kingdom
Contributed by Erik Trinkaus, December 8, 2009 (sent for review October 13, 2009)
Abstract
Neandertals differ from recent and terminal Pleistocene human populations in their patterns of dental development, endostructural (internal structure) organization, and relative tissue proportions. Although significant changes in craniofacial and postcranial morphology have been found between the Middle Paleolithic and earlier Upper Paleolithic modern humans of western Eurasia and the terminal Pleistocene and Holocene inhabitants of the same region, most studies of dental maturation and structural morphology have compared Neandertals only to later Holocene humans. To assess whether earlier modern humans contrasted with later modern populations and possibly approached the Neandertal pattern, we used high-resolution microtomography to analyze the remarkably complete mixed dentition of the early Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian) child from Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Portugal, and compared it to a Neandertal sample, the late Upper Paleolithic (Magdalenian) child of La Madeleine, and a worldwide extant human sample. Some aspects of the dental maturational pattern and tooth endostructural organization of Lagar Velho 1 are absent from extant populations and the Magdalenian specimen and are currently documented only among Neandertals. Therefore, a simple Neandertal versus modern human dichotomy is inadequate to accommodate the morphostructural and developmental variation represented by Middle Paleolithic and earlier Upper Paleolithic populations. These data reinforce the complex nature of Neandertal-modern human similarities and differences, and document ongoing human evolution after the global establishment of modern human morphology.
dentition development modern humans Neandertal Pleistocene
Footnotes
1To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: bayle@mnhn.fr ortrinkaus@artsci.wustl.edu.
Author contributions: P.B., R.M., E.T., and J.Z. designed research; P.B., R.M., C.D., and A.M. performed research; P.B., R.M., and A.M. analyzed data; and P.B., R.M., E.T., and J.Z. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0914202107/DCSupplemental.
