The Anthropology of Modern Human Teeth: Dental Morphology and its Variation in Recent and Fossil Homo sapiens, Edition 2

G. Richard Scott · Christy G. Turner II · Grant C. Townsend · María Martinón-Torres

Mar 2018 · Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology Book 79 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

All humans share certain components of tooth structure, but show variation in size and morphology around this shared pattern. This book presents a worldwide synthesis of the global variation in tooth morphology in recent populations. Research has advanced on many fronts since the publication of the first edition, which has become a seminal work on the subject. This revised and updated edition introduces new ideas in dental genetics and ontogeny and summarizes major historical problems addressed by dental morphology. The detailed descriptions of 29 dental variables are fully updated with current data and include details of a new web-based application for using crown and root morphology to evaluate ancestry in forensic cases. A new chapter describes what constitutes a modern human dentition in the context of the hominin fossil record.

About the author

G. Richard Scott is Foundation Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has written two books and edited two books on dental morphology and anthropology.

At his passing in 2013, Christy G. Turner II was Regents Professor Emeritus in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. He wrote books on dental morphology, cannibalism and violence in the prehistoric Southwest, and cave taphonomy in Siberia.

Grant C. Townsend is Emeritus Professor at Adelaide Dental School. He has received the Distinguished Scientist Award in Craniofacial Biology from the International Association for Dental Research, and has published books in the field of human growth and development.

María Martinón-Torres is a Reader in Paleoanthropology at University College London. She has studied some of the most relevant fossil dental samples from Eurasia, from the Pleistocene sites of Atapuerca to the earliest Homo sapiens in China.