The anthropology of modern human teeth: dental morphology and its variation in recent and fossil Homo sapiens

Abstract

"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. Includes a new chapter on hominin dental morphology, guiding readers through the significant advances in the field over the past two decades; Discusses advances in the role of dental morphology in the assessment of ancestry, and its application in forensic anthropology; An updated world pattern of dental morphological variation helps researchers to evaluate how their findings fit into a global context" From the publisher.