Dental Microwear Texture Analysis
Dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) is a method that reconstructs diet and dietary behavior from microscopic wear patterns on the surfaces of teeth. Pioneered by Mark Teaford in the 1980s, DMTA analyzes the three-dimensional texture of wear patterns produced as food is chewed. The method reflects short-term (last few months) dietary composition, complementing longer-term dietary information obtained from stable isotope analysis. DMTA has proven powerful for distinguishing diets rich in tough/fibrous foods from those dominated by hard/brittle foods.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Ungar, P. S. (2007). Evolution of the human diet: The known, the unknown, and the unknowable. Oxford University Press. · URL
- Teaford, M. F. (1988). A review of dental microwear and diet in modern mammals. Scanning Microscopy, 2(2), 1149-1166. · URL
- Grine, F. E. (1986). Dental evidence for dietary differences in Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Journal of Human Evolution, 15(10), 783-822. · URL
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.