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Journal of Dental Research
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Concise Review: Her Name is "Lucy", Our Three-million-year-old Ancestor

E.D. Shields

Department of Oral Biology, Faculty of Dentistry, McGill University, 3640 University Street, Montreal, PQ, H3A 2B2, Canada, Department of Human Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, 1205 Doctor Penfield Avenue, Montreal, PQ, H3A 1B1, Canada

Dental anthropology is a key discipline in studies to determine the evolutionary history of our hominid ancestors, to identify the origin and dispersal of modem humans, and to reconstruct the source of observed dental variation. A survey of hominid and modem human evolutionary history, emphasizing results from powerful multivariate dental morphometric methodologies, suggests a single African origin of modem humans > 150,000 years before present from a Homo heidelbergensis ancestor. A continuum among modem humanity is described, with, first, sub-Saharan Africans, then southeast Asian Negrito, and Australian aborigines at its extant root. Other interpretations of the available data are possible. Examinations of the progress of the evolution of teeth through time give significant insight into dental morphogenetics and variation, and the biology of dental evolution. The mechanisms of evolution which fashion a phenotype and the methods of molecular and dental phylogenetics are reviewed and evaluated. This is an exciting time for dental anthropology, with fascinating and challenging questions to address, but anthropologists, not dentists, dominate the field. The perspective of a dentist can meaningfully add to the dynamics of dental anthropology.

Key Words: evolution • dental • tooth • human • hominid • morphogenetic.

Journal of Dental Research, Vol. 79, No. 1, 13-20 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/00220345000790010101
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