In their new, open-access study in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology by Jacob Scheinblum, Dr. Scott McGraw, Kaita Gurian, and Dr. Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg offer fresh insight into how enamel microstructure reflects primate feeding behavior. By analyzing the angles at which enamel prisms meet worn tooth surfaces in three cercopithecoid genera, the authors tested whether habitual or fallback hard-object feeding leaves similar structural signatures. Their results show that Cercocebus atys, a routine hard-object feeder, consistently exhibits much higher prism angles than both Lophocebus albigena, a fallback hard-object consumer and soft-object-feeding Cercopithecus. Notably, Lophocebus was indistinguishable from Cercopithecus, indicating that enamel prism orientation primarily reflects habitual, not occasional, durophagy. This finding complicates efforts to use enamel structure alone to infer hard-object feeding in fossil hominins and highlights the need to integrate microstructure with microwear, isotopes, and broader ecological evidence in paleo-dietary reconstruction.

Read the full article on the journal's website here!